The UAE will "no doubt" have a third telecom operator as part of the government's plans to liberalise the sector , the country’s telecommunications regulator said, without indicating when this would happen.

Etisalat was the only telecom services provider in the country until February 2006 when du launched its mobile operations.

"Further on down the road we have to license a third mobile operator. There is no doubt about it, and there is a roadmap for market liberalisation that we are getting approved by the authorities," Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) director-general Mohammed Nasser al-Ghanim said in an interview in the latest annual Abu Dhabi report released by Oxford Business Group earlier this week.

TRA will conduct a study to determine whether the third operator is needed in the UAE, a lucrative market with high mobile phone and internet usage.

Telecom service tariffs in the UAE are also among some of the highest in the world.

Ghanim said the government will make sure the market is big enough for a third company to operate and for competition to be sustainable.

"We want to make sure that, especially with the global financial crisis, the entire sector is healthy and no operator goes out of business," he said.

Both Etisalat and du have been seeking to grow their markets, with the former focused on expanding internationally and has established operations in 17 countries.

The UAE's own telecom liberalisation is driven by the country's World Trade Organisation (WTO) 1996 membership, with member states obliged to allow free competition in the sector by 2010.

However, the UAE has secured concessions under which it does not have to create a free telecom market until 2015.

Ghanim said TRA also wants to make the .ae domain name as a "definitive choice" for companies in the UAE.

There are 12 local and foreign companies licensed to provide .ae registrations.

The total number of websites with this domain name has reached 92,000.

Maktoob