UAE Etisalat09 Annual net profit of USD 2.4 billion

C114 Beijing Time February 2 Morning News (SHANGMU) The UAE's largest telecoms operator Etisalat released its 2009-year earnings as at December 31, 2009. According to earnings reports, its net profit for the year was 8.84 billion dirham (C114 Note: USD 2.4 billion), up 16% per cent of the one-time earnings of the 2008-year sale of Saudi Mobily shares, 892 million dirham.　　The full-year revenue was 30.8 billion dirham (8.4 billion U.S. dollars), compared to the 29.4 billion dirham growth of 5% in 2008. "In spite of the continued downturn in the global economic environment, Etisalat 2009 has been successful again." Etisalat Chairman Muhammad Hassan Omland (Mohammad Hassan Omran) said: "This (2009 earnings) results show that Etisalat adopted the right strategy and adopted selective policies in international investment. So we have grasped the most valuable opportunities that exist in the existing financial environment. "Over the past 2 years, Etisalat has continued its strategy of developing new revenue sources," he said. We achieved this by introducing new packages and services, and they have achieved the desired effect of maintaining our growth, even if the UAE's telecoms penetration is already one of the world's top countries. We have also succeeded in reducing our operating costs and further improving our performance.　　"he added. Muhammad Hall Fan Er Kamz, Etisalat chief executive, said: "In 2009, Khalfan successfully launched the next generation of services on the Qamzi network, which will make Abu Dhabi (Abu Dhabi is the world's first 100% capital city covered by FTTH. In fact, our goal is to make the UAE one of the first countries in the world to have a national FTTH network in 2011. This reflects our commitment to adding value to our users ' lives and providing them with cutting-edge and state-of-the-art services. Etisalat also continued to develop mobile networks in 2009. The 2G network currently covers 99.5% of the residential areas in the UAE with coverage of the 100%,3G network. We continue to invest in human resources, such as training and accreditation.　　"he added. In addition, he said, the number of mobile users in the UAE Etisalat over 7.74 million by the end of 2009, a 6% increase from the same period in 2008.　　Fixed-network users reached 1.31 million, internet users reached 1.33 million. According to C114, the financial crisis did not affect Etisalat's enthusiasm to adopt new technologies. As the UAE's largest business-wide operator, Etisalat developed a full IP and fibre-optic access strategy a few years ago. This January, Alcatel-Lucent announced that Etisalat was selected to accelerate the deployment of its national FTTH network, Etisalat willUsing Rung's gpon technology to connect 50,000 households and business users, the contract is worth millions of euros, and the company also has a gpon device that uses Huawei.