Internet in Dubai

The United Arab Emirates have been in the news recently because of the poor internet connectivity. After an under water cable had been cut it became quite clear the region isn't well connected yet. Another thing interesting about the UAE is the governmental control of the content. Obviously anything related to pornography is blocked but also some of the social communities, but not all of them. Orkut is blocked, facebook is available.

This weekend a small delegation of Indivirtual was in Dubai. We experienced that their internet connection is indeed not the fastest. But despite the central proxy most corporate on-line tools we use work fine. Skype doesn't because the government wants you to use their phone company. When we got stuck in the desert it's nice to know that a big part of the desert actualy does have cell phone coverage :-)