The UAE's largest telecom provider, Etisalat, announced that it has further reduced its roaming rates for voice calls, SMS and data. Starting April 1st, 2018, Etisalat's prepaid and post-paid customers will get discounted roaming rates of up to 29% on data, outgoing voice calls to UAE, GCC and local destinations and outgoing SMS while traveling to any Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) country through any roaming partner.
Effective April 1, outgoing calls to UAE and other GCC nations will be 2.203 AED per minute and customers will save 3 percent; while outgoing local calls will be 0.881 AED per minute and customers will save 4 percent. The price of outgoing texts (SMS) has been reduced by 14% to 0.22 AED per SMS, and data rates have been reduced by 29% at 2.203 AED per MB.
The new rates are introduced in coordination with the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) to encourage roaming services within the GCC at affordable rates. For even bigger savings, Etisalat customers can also choose to subscribe to any of its data and combo roaming packages, offering non-stop roaming data usage in more than 100 countries for as low as AED 35 per day, the company said.
Etisalat has an extensive coverage of almost 730 international outbound roaming networks in 213 countries. To enhance customer's data experience, Etisalat expanded its 4G LTE partners to 291 networks in over 120 countries, enabling subscribers to take advantage of the high-speed mobile data offered on 4G networks while browsing the Internet outside the UAE.