The other day I had to add minutes to my cell phone (yep, still refusing to call it a "mobile") and I thought it'd be a fun process to share with you all.
First off, while I'm sure some people have them, I don't know anyone personally who has a landline telephone here in Dubai. Everyone I know uses their cell phones exclusively.
Either way, all phone service here is provided by a company called Etisalat. That's right, there's only one cell phone company in the UAE. Ahhh, the joys of a monopoly. Goes hand-in-hand with the whole 'dictator' thing, I guess.
However, it does save you time comparison shopping all of the different T-Mobile, US Cellular, Cingular, Verizon (shudder) Wireless plans ...
The other interesting difference here is that all of the phones are prepaid. Which I guess makes sense - if you don't have a street address, how is Etisalat going to send you a monthly bill?
So you want a cell phone in Dubai? Well, first you need the actual phone. Etisalat doesn't sell those, so you have to buy it at Géant, Carrefour, or any one of the zillion electronics stores in the mall. They have all of the standard phone models - good ol' RAZRs are as popular here as they are in the States.
The phones have to be GSM, though. GSM means something in French ... no doubt the "M" stands for "mobile". Sheesh.
I guess GSM is the most popular standard for cell phones in the world. In the USA half of the providers are GSM, and half are something else. And those phones won't work with the GSM network. But I guess the US is the only country that doesn't play nicely with GSM (imagine that!)
Anyway, you buy a phone at a store. Then you buy a SIM card from Etisalat, which comes with a one year subscription to service. This costs AED 165, which is about $45. But they also throw in AED 10 ($2.72) in calls. Nice monopoly.
But after that you have to buy phone cards to recharge your minutes. These are available at virtually any store, which makes sense, because if I run out of cell phone minutes I'll want them pronto.
Oh, also different? While outgoing calls and text messages cost money, all incoming calls and text messages are free.
Here's a price breakdown:
Sending Local calls AED 0.30 ($0.08) first minute (Peak or Off-Peak) AED 0.15 ($0.04) each 30 sec. after (Peak - 7am-2pm and 4pm-12am) AED 0.12 ($0.03) each 30 sec. after (Off-Peak - 2pm-4pm and 12am-7am)
Sending Texts AED 0.18 ($0.04) per local message AED 0.60 ($0.16) per international message
Now here's the part that confuses me. I can't seem to find the "peak" and "off-peak" hours for International calls on the Etisalat website. But I've read elsewhere it's 9 pm to 7 am on weekdays, all day on Friday and on public holidays, but wouldn't it be nice to know it officially?
International to USA AED 8.50 ($2.31) first minute (Peak) AED 13.10 ($3.56) first minute (Off-Peak) ** AED 2.12 ($0.57) each minute after (Peak) AED 1.37 ($0.37) each minute after (Off-Peak)
** Notice that the first minute Off-Peak costs more than the first minute of Peak. Punks.
So here's a step-by-step photo gallery of my recharging my phone.
We start with a AED 25 recharge card, which is about $6.80.
Just like a phone card in the States, you scratch off the ... scratchy substance to reveal the phone card numbers. Here I am using a 25 fil piece, which has funky hexagonal edges that work well on the ... whatever that substance is. (A 25 fil piece is a quarter of a dirham. So that makes it worth about $0.07.)
Then you text "120" followed by the phone card number (and yes, I made a mistake while typing it in, can you see what it is?)
Finally when you type the numbers in correctly, the phone shows you your balance.
Talk away!
And that, my friends, is the phone situation in Dubai.
