GCC broadband 'too expensive' says Du CEO

More competition is needed in the broadband market in the Arab world, where prices are too expensive, the chief executive of telecom firm Du said.

Osman Sultan said broadband pricing in Arabic countries needed to fall to match the cost of the service in the US and Europe.

“More competition means a more dynamic environment this is for sure,” he said.

“We (Du) price broadband but if you look at it from the point of view of an evolutionary framework, you need to have a proper evolution of broadband. Today if you want to buy broadband, as opposed to the US and Europe, it is still expensive in the Arab world.

“Here you have two operators in the UAE but you can’t say today the competition is playing fully in the broadband market.”He said there were ongoing discussions between the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) and the UAE’s other telecommunications operator, Etisalat, to see if Du could use its competitor’s existing broadband infrastructure to operate in other emirates outside Dubai.

“In the UAE we have infrastructure, we can’t say the same elsewhere in the other Arab world. This (the infrastructure) is needed if you want to get the broadband take-up as in other countries." he said.

Broadband consumers in the US pay an average of $16 per megabit per second of download speed, much lower than the $46 average in the Middle East and Africa, according to UK analyst firm Point Topic.

In Western Europe consumers pay an average of $6.23 per megabit per second of download speed.

Sultan was speaking at a panel discussion on the future of the internet in the Gulf hosted by Tejari, the Middle East's largest business-to-business online marketplace for global emerging markets.

Following the meeting a five-point plan of action was put together that included building the Gulf’s ICT infrastructure, a long term goal to position Dubai as a global hub for multi cultural language, the importance of Arabic generated content, the need to foster a culture of entrepreneurship amongst the young and the importance of education and a unanimous need for an internet policy to protect the privacy, safety and rights of users.