Etisalat targets 500 Tbps connectivity to power UAE artificial intelligence

The project represents a fundamental shift in the group’s strategic direction, moving beyond traditional telecommunications to prioritize high-capacity, low-latency infrastructure. By diversifying routing and scaling bandwidth from the current 20 Tbps, the company intends to provide the backbone required for AI campuses and global cloud providers. This expansion serves as the inaugural commitment under a revamped corporate strategy, which now centers on four pillars: telecom, AI and business solutions, infrastructure, and fintech.

Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed, who also chairs the Emirates Investment Authority, emphasized that national institutions must lead in creating the environment where AI can flourish. For the group, which currently serves 250 million subscribers across 38 countries, the upgrade is framed as a matter of digital sovereignty. Chairman Jassem Mohamed Bu Ataba Alzaabi noted that the objective is to ensure the UAE remains a hub for global data flow, providing the resiliency needed for both public and private sectors to deploy large-scale AI applications with absolute technical confidence.