Lots of people have had experience with Etisalat in one way or another, and Etisalat owns a large chunk of Du so its pretty much the same company but its pretty odd how their coverage is slightly different. Everyone knows that Etisalat is one of the most rigid networks to have, they aren’t cheap, they really work hard to block your content, and they aren’t the best service.

The funny is that as we were approaching Dubai my Blackberry started dinging, I thought it was off and we were still 7000 feet in the air. I look at the phone and I was receiving the bbms, emails, and smses. I look at the network provider and I was connected to Du, all the way until the plane landed.

Now this is what I face every time I’m in Dubai:

With Etisalat:

• I can make local and international phone calls with out an issue on a normal phone
• When I connect using my Blackberry, I can’t get any BB service or msgs but the phone works normally

With Du:

• With my normal phone I can make local calls but when I try to make international calls I always get Network Busy, calls don’t go through
• With the Blackberry all the services work and I can make local and international calls

No matter what I did this always seems to be the case with these networks. Same situation that I mentioned in Bahrain with Batelco & Zain.