Dubai, UAE, February 26, 2018:  UAE is ranked no. 1 for the highest Fiber to the Home (FTTH) penetration among all its global counterparts for a second year in a row, according to the leading industry body FTTH Council.

The council published its annual report recently that highlighted UAE with a coverage of 94.3 percent compared to countries such as Singapore (90.3 percent), South Korea (81.6 percent), Hong Kong (75.6 percent) and Japan (69.1 percent).

Saleh Al Abdooli, CEO, Etisalat Group, said: “Our network is a backbone to our long-term strategy as a company to enable and drive digital transformation across our network. Today’s announcement signifies that we have maintained consistent leadership globally in FTTH penetration setting a benchmark in the global telecom industry. This achievement was only possible due to the continuous support and vision of the leadership of UAE in the development and modernisation of the infrastructure.

“Etisalat invested more than AED 31 billion in the network infrastructure. This has led to the launch of innovative services meeting the growing demand and changing requirements of our customers across the country.”

With Etisalat’s corporate strategy focused on ‘Driving the Digital Future to Empower Societies’ the network forms a significant component of this digital transformation journey. Etisalat has continuously focused on investing in innovation and on next generation technologies and services to expand and enhance the network.

In today’s connected world, with the greater need for computing and connectivity capabilities such an advanced network also enables the implementation of futuristic technologies like augmented reality, robotics and artificial intelligence. For enterprises, cloud plays a pivotal role in digital transformation requiring a network that will support advanced use cases, applications and technologies.

Consumers are also able to experience high performance and capabilities required in advanced gaming, streaming, applications and entertainment with a high-speed network today, which is at 1GBps for Etisalat eLife customers. eLife TV also includes the country’s widest portfolio of on-demand movies and TV series with 150 TV channels in High Definition.