VOIP in UAE to be legal by end of 2009?

It seems UAE has finally understood the important of VOIP and telecommunication in maintaining the competitive advantage. How does this affect you as a VOIP user or VOIP Provider? Lets discuss.

We reported a few months back that Etisalat is blocking VOIP in UAE region and also possible charging a violation charge for people using VOIP via VPN. This forced many users to actually switch to DU or Etisalat's VOIP solution which is almost 10 times costlier than the most cheapest international calling service like Betamax etc.

According to Maktoob Business, A senior official at the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) said, International internet calls could be legalised in the UAE by the end of the year. Mohammed Gheyath, executive director of technology development affairs, said the regulator is drawing up a policy on international internet telecommunications, know as Voice over IP (VoIP) and will be published before year-end.

Currently only Etisalat and Du are legally allowed to offer VoIP services within the country but now they can start offering the service outside the country which means it can bring down the cost of VOIP lower but not to extent of other cheap international calls providers.

However, In my opinion UAE won't do any good by just giving VOIP in the hands of the two large telecom companies who would make little effort to bring the cost down and create a monopolistic market in UAE. What they should do instead is start offering licenses to international players and let them compete with Du and Etisalat. However looking at how things work at govenment level, its very unlikely that this will ever come in play atleast not so early.

The only hope is it might bring down the cost of ownership for telecom players and might bring down cost if they are ready to pass the benefit over to consumers. However, in monopolistic market companies often set the prices and people follow them.

If you live in UAE or call UAE often or offer VOIP services to UAE, do you think this will change anything for you?