Du offers fastest internet

The telecommunications company du is offering the fastest home internet package available in the UAE. With advertised download speeds of up to 12 megabits per second (Mbps), it is three times faster than the best service offered by its competitor, Etisalat. At Dh750 (US$204) a month, the package is not cheap. But at full speed, it would download a five-minute song in three seconds, or a DVD-quality feature film in about 15 minutes.

Farid Faraidooni, an executive vice president at du, said the new offering was "a giant leap forward" for internet access in the UAE, and "further underscores our ambition of raising the level of telecommunications in the UAE to best-in-class international standards". The average advertised download speed offered by internet providers in the developed world is 9Mbps, according to a 2007 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report.

Download speeds almost 10 times faster than this are offered in Japan, where almost 40 per cent of the population are connected to a fibre-optic communications network. Fibre-optic lines, which transmit information at the speed of light, are commonly used to carry data between cities and countries. But the "last mile" of cable that connects homes to the network is still typically copper, forming a significant bandwidth bottleneck.

Fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) networks that extend high-speed fibre connections to individual households have taken off in East Asia, particularly in Japan and South Korea, which are home to some of the fastest internet connections in the world. Etisalat is currently in the process of laying a national FTTH network, and expects hundreds of thousands of customers to access the new system by the end of the year.

In Dubai, some new residential areas served by du, such as Dubai Marina and The Greens, already have fibre-optic lines reaching each home. For business customers, du offers connection speeds of up to 48Mbps, although at a price beyond reach for all but the largest operations. As part of the new options announced yesterday, businesses are being offered speed upgrades at no cost in return for signing one-year contracts.

"Our offer is simple yet powerful enough to create a real impact on our customers' business," Mr Faraidooni said. "Speed and reliability are critical when accessing information and taking business decisions." [e-mail]