For Etisalat, foreign markets look full of promise

After losing 80,000 customers in the three months to June, Etisalat has defied expectations by increasing its customer base by 180,000 in the past quarter.

This growth not only marks out telecommunications as one of the few industries still on a growth path as the national economy contracts, but also suggests the worst-case scenarios of population decline need revisiting. The results reinforce the view that as consumers cut spending on luxuries big and small, they keep on making calls, sending texts and surfing the web, making telecoms immune to the downturn.

Etisalat’s profitability is threatened less by macroeconomics than it is by du, its two-and-a-half-year-old competitor.