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All images on this page are courtesy GULF NEWS. Reproduced with permission.

eCompany" (formally Emirates Internet & Multimedia), which is a part of Etisalat, provides the Internet for the majority in the United Arab Emirates.

For home users, eCompany provides dial-up connection, ISDN connection, and cable and DSL connection. The Cable and DSL connections are known as "Al Shamil". Al Shamil offers speeds from 256K up to 2Mb.

eCompany was the sole Internet service provider of the United Arab Emirates, but temporarily a second ISP, Sahm Net, which was unaffected by eCompany's censorship, operated in certain new housing developments and Dubai Media City and Dubai Internet City. Recently Sahm was acquired by DIC (Dubai Internet City), although as of April 2006 they were still free of the UAE's proxy. There might be a third ISP but will be partially owned by etisalat.The facts are unknown if they will restrict the internet or not OR the ISP will come in service. If it does, The ISP will be up and running By December 2006

The dial-up and ISDN connections are billed by the hour, whereas the Domestic/Residential Cable and DSL connections have a fixed monthly rate depending on speed, whereas Business connections are quite legendary for being billed depending on the amount of users and the usage of the connection.

The following websites are blocked in the U.A.E.:

Pornography
Religious content and/or content that is against the religion of Islam
Content that criticises the rulers of the United Arab Emirates
Information about cracking, phreaking, etc
Information on how to get around the internet block
Websites offering peer to peer services/torrent files
Dating and matrimonial sites (in particular non-arabic ones)
The entire Israel (.il domain) TLD
Gay and lesbian sites
Other material that EIM, or the Government of the United Arab Emirates considers objectionable
Websites that offer VOIP telephony (such as Skype) at subsidised rates, which affect Etisalat's profits
Certain blogs
Certain file hosting websites
Certain Image hosts
Criminal Skills
Sites that oppose Censorship
Communist websites

Etisalat uses the American company SecureComputing, similarly to other GCC nations. They purchase lists of websites as classified by the SecureComputing company. According to the magazine TimeOut Dubai, the UAE government pays a little more than 9.5 Million AED each year to the SecureComputing company, the equivalent of 2.6 Million US Dollars, (this is worked out at the rate of 2$ USD per connection).

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