- ETISALAT E-LIFE
triple play telecom offer: voice, data, and television
Project Highlights
Title: eLife
Brief Description: The UAE’s effort to become the first nation to become fully fiber connected. The national telco, Etisalat, From, platform strategy to delivering a new service offering, the multi-year project achieved its goal.Start Date: February 2008
Completion Date: January 20
Location: Dubai, & Abu Dhabi UAE
Website: etisalat.ae
Consultant(s)/Member(s) Involved: Ramiro Ruiz, Mario J Pino
Consultant(s)/Member(s) Role(s) or Contribution(s): Taking the mandate, constructing the strategy, coordinating technical and commercial aspects of a full country conversion to FTTH-based telco services.
Partnership Collaboration(s) of Significance: Kaon, Humax, Airties, Huawei, Soft@Home, LG, Harmonic, Verimatrix, BBDO ME, Qualcomm.
Business Impact(s)/Result(s)
- Significant improvement in service delivery for broadband Internet
- Completely new TV service with all attributes of IPTV
- Bundling of Voice to offer a triple play offering to homes
- Higher throughput-based service offerings such as VOD, DVR as well as interactive streaming Apps were introduced under a new branding: eLife
- Greater take-up of services resulted in record number of customers and revenues
Business Scenario
Incumbent national Telco upgraded just in time for new competitor offering. Having just a few years earlier introduced cable TV and ADSL-based broadband, the operator had a short time to upgrade to new technology and service offerings.
The most significant task, besides the actual laying of a GPON network, was to develop the service offering at a time when such advanced services were evolving in the telco industry. The finding of a commercially viable and consumer-accepted offering of services required a careful consideration of every trend and vendor-pitched concept. Many valuable insights and contacts were gained by participants in this project who now are a part of CLS.
Approach
With the implementation of a nationwide fiber optic network, the expectation of consumers to receive fast and reliable Internet, high-definition voice, and updated television service offerings was something that Etisalat and its teams needed to deliver.
Prior to eLife, various departments within Etisalat developed, offered, managed, and supported the various services of broadband, voice, and television, over different networks, and even under different brands.
Therefore, the approach of the eLife project was to not only ensure that 'technically' the most advanced broadband, voice, and television services could be brought to market using a single nationwide fiber optic network, but that all of the services would be unified under a single brand.
In late 2012, after years of planning and implementation, eLife is today recognized as one of the most ambitious and successful 3-play service deployments in the Middle East, if not the world, including being able to lay claim that Abu Dhabi, UAE became the first capital in the world achieving 100% fiber optic network access to all of the eLife services.
