The United Arab Emirates was united in 1971, and the first telco to establish itself within the country was Etisalat.
It was founded five years after the unification of the country, in 1976. Back when the Union was formed, there were of course no mobile telephones - and only the most privileged homes were connected by landline. There were a few tens of thousands of homes connected with a fixed-line analogue home phone. It was quite a privilege to have a telephone at that time.There was probably one household in the village that had a fixed-line phone.If you wanted to contact someone somewhere, you would arrange a time. Somewhere around the mid-1970s there were about 30,000 to 40,000 homes that were connected. The British company Cable & Wireless, which traces its history back to the 1860s, was one of the main telecoms providers when the UAE was formed.
Today, the UAE has one of the highest rates of mobile-phone use globally.
