New Etisalat Wasel plan offers per-second billing

Emirates Telecommunications Corporation (Etisalat) has announced the launch of ‘New Wasel’, a pre-paid mobile plan which charges calls on a per-second basis. Local calls are charged at AED0.005 (USD0.001) per second (AED0.3 per minute), while the plan also allows subscribers to nominate one country from a choice of 200 across the world to receive a discounted calling rate of only AED0.99 per minute during off-peak hours (all day Friday and from 9pm to 7am from Saturday to Thursday). Etisalat is facing growing competition in the United Arab Emirates telecoms market from sole rival Du, which offered per-second billing from launch in February 2007. TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database states that at 30 September 2012 Etisalat remained the country’s largest mobile operator by subscribers, with a market share of 54.2% (7.05 million customers) to Du’s 45.8%, though its share has slipped from 60.3% twelve months earlier.