Etisalat to Expand Global Connectivity Beyond 500 Tbps by 2030

The UAE's etisalat group is taking back the name it retired four years ago, and attaching to that return a build-out that will multiply its international connectivity by more than 25 times, lifting it above 500 terabits per second by 2030.

The company, which has traded as e& since a 2022 rebrand, said the expansion is shaped around the strain artificial intelligence is putting on global data processing and data flows. It is meant to serve the UAE's AI campuses, global cloud providers, and the group's own operations and customers across its markets. Diversified routes and a low-latency design are intended to keep the country's link to the global digital economy direct and resilient, and to safeguard its digital sovereignty.

Jassem Mohamed Bu Ataba Alzaabi, chairman of the group, said the project reflected a conviction that the UAE should govern and build with AI rather than only adopt it, and that this demands digital infrastructure built to a scale that readies the country for the future.

Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, vice president, deputy prime minister and chairman of the Presidential Court, attended Monday's launch and was briefed on the plans in his role as chairman of the Emirates Investment Authority, which holds a 60% stake in the group. He said AI sits at the centre of the country's development path and that strengthening digital capabilities creates the ecosystem needed to realise its potential. Every institution in the country, public and private, should be able to build and innovate with AI at the scale the coming decade will demand, with confidence in the infrastructure beneath it, he said. The UAE's aim, he added, goes past keeping up with technological change to contributing to the creation and development of the technologies themselves.

A return to the founding name

The switch in corporate identity from e& back to Etisalat is presented as a reflection of the group's strategy and ambition for the AI era. Sheikh Mansour also attended the launch of the group's 50th anniversary celebrations, where it set out a vision of becoming an AI-powered telecom operator. In an open letter on its website, the group said it was founded in 1976 under a name that at its root means to connect, and that it is entering its next 50 years under the name it started with, the one customers have trusted for five decades. Among the milestones it listed were the first lines laid across the desert, the region's first mobile network, and bringing the internet to the UAE.

The connectivity project is the first major commitment under a new strategy organised around four business engines: telco, AI and business solutions, infrastructure, and fintech. Alzaabi said the anniversary had pushed the group to set out what the next era asks of it, and that the project is its answer, describing AI as the defining technology of this generation.

Group in figures

Etisalat operates across 38 countries and reported 251.5 million subscribers at the end of June, up 30.4% from a year earlier, in second-quarter results published on July 30. First-half revenue rose 11.6% to $10.4 billion, or AED 38.1 billion, with net profit of $1.6 billion, or AED 6 billion. The group ranks 13th in a 2026 ranking of the region's 100 most valuable companies, with a market value of $46.7 billion as of January 31, 2026.