etisalat UAE turns 50 this year, and instead of a quiet commemorative logo, the operator is marking the occasion with something customers can use: free data, discounted hardware and a faster home fibre tier. As with most anniversary promotions, the headline figures come with “up to” qualifiers, but some of these offers are worth a closer look.
The most eye-catching perk is a loyalty reward that gives long-standing customers up to 10GB of free data for each year they have been with the operator. It’s a smart way to reward tenure in a market where switching providers has become easier and where du has spent years competing hard on price and bundles. etisalat hasn’t publicly detailed how tenure is calculated, whether the data has an expiry date, or whether prepaid and postpaid customers qualify equally. Anyone expecting a huge data windfall should check eligibility in the app first.
The rest of the package is more familiar promotional territory. Selected local and roaming data add-ons get up to five times their usual allowance, selected devices and accessories are discounted by as much as 90 per cent, and new postpaid and home connections on qualifying plans earn 50,000 Smiles points. Extra benefits are spread across etisalat’s own ecosystem, including Smiles and etisalat money, plus partners Careem Plus, STARZPLAY MAX and GoChat. As usual, the steepest discounts tend to apply to a narrow selection of stock, so the 90 per cent figure says more about the ceiling than about typical savings.
The more lasting announcement is the arrival of two new home fibre plans, Neo 2G and Neo Fusion 2G. Both deliver 2Gbps downloads and 500Mbps uploads over etisalat’s XGS-PON network, and both include a Wi-Fi 7 router. That pairing matters. Older Wi-Fi standards struggle to pass multi-gigabit fibre speeds to individual devices, so without Wi-Fi 7 hardware at home, much of that extra bandwidth would never reach phones and laptops.
Neo 2G costs AED 699 per month before VAT, while Neo Fusion 2G costs AED 899. The pricier plan adds STARZPLAY Max, premium OSN channels, a 4K TV box, home calling benefits and Wi-Fi 7 access points for whole-home coverage. Both include Amazon Prime, TV by etisalat and Box Office video on demand.
Those prices put the plans firmly in premium territory, and for many households 2Gbps will remain more than they need day to day. Large families running several 4K streams, gamers downloading 100GB titles, and home workers uploading large files are the obvious audience.
