Etisalat Suffering From Cable Cut
Etisalat is suffering from a cable cut. Again. It is not clear which regions are affected, and when it will be fixed, and worryingly, it seem Etisalat is not even keen to officially share the information with its customers.
I live in Sharjah. I moved apartments only last week. With my Internet finally setup, since the past two days, I started noticing that while browsing was completely fine, video streaming and downloads were abysmal. On any download, I was not able to get more than 150kbps. I tinkered around with my router and the Etisalat whitebox, thinking there was something wrong with my how home network was setup. After resetting them to factory defaults, changing various settings, and searching Google for answers to no avail, I had no idea what was wrong. I asked my colleague Faisal Hashmi, who lives in Sharjah as well, if he was suffering from the same problem. He was, leading me to believe that there was something wrong on Etisalat's end.
Yesterday night, I contacted Etisalat's Internet chat support to inquire about my problem. The customer support representative (CSR) there confirmed by deepest fears: Etisalat was indeed suffering from a cable cut. The CSR said it wasn't in their hands as it was an International line that was cut. I asked when the problem would be sorted out? He had no idea.
This was certainly news, yet strangely Etisalat were yet to officially announce it to its customers. I asked the CSR if Etisalat was planning to anytime soon, to which he replied that only if a customer inquires about it.
I tried to save the chat log but the CSR disconnected almost immediately after answering a few of my questions, leaving me unable to do so.
Usually, Etisalat is transparent enough to let its customers know that there was a problem with their service. However, this time around it appears that the issue won't affect the majority of its users, and probably thinks it's not worth talking about. Our Dubai office Etisalat line works just fine.
We have reached out to Etisalat for an official confirmation. We will update this article if we receive a reply.
