Etisalat awards Huawei FTTH contract

United Arab Emirates incumbent Etisalat has awarded a contract to Chinese vendor Huawei for a large-scale commercial fibre to the home (FTTH) network, reports TMCnet. Etisalat expects its FTTH direct access customer base to be ‘in the hundreds of thousands by the end of the year.’ The planned network will provide last mile fibre connections to residential subscribers commercial buildings alike. No further details on the deal were given. According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms database, Etisalat is the only provider of broadband services in the UAE outside the ‘free economic zones’ of Dubai, and had an estimated 350,000 DSL subscribers at the end of 2007.