Triple Play

Many of the homes in Abu Dhabi are now served by a direct fibre optic connection, right into the villa or apartment. In the UK Virgin claim to have a fibre optic service, but in reality the fibre only comes to a termination point in the street somewhere and from there it is good old copper that has been in the ground for probably 40 or 50 years that is delivering the broadband service.

I have a fibre router (from Huawei - a Chinese manufacturer) on the wall of my apartment, rather like this one....






The fibre connectivity allows Etisalat (one of only 2 telecoms companies in the country) to provide “Triple Play” (voice, internet, TV - all IP) over a single connection, with high speed internet services. So, as they had an offer on which included all the World Cup footy for free (!), I decided to upgrade to 30mbps triple play. They have been and installed it, although the TV channels have yet to appear. The internet though, isn’t bad.... here is a screen shot of the speed test...




So, nearly 23 meg over my wireless network. Not bad!

You can get faster from some providers at home, where the internet market is much more mature - and for much less money too. It will cost c.£100 a month for triple play. Fortunately, my work will pay the broadband costs, some makes it doable.

I’ll let you know how I get on with the TV.......