www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Under the multi-million euro deal, UAE-based telecoms operator Etisalat selected Alcatel-Lucent to speed up the deployment of its nationwide fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network. French vendor’s gigabit passive optical network (GPON) technology will be utilized by Etisalat to connect 50,000 households and business customers to the ‘eLife’ network.

Through this platform both residential and business customers would be provided by Etisalat with simultaneous access to several high-definition (HD) TV channels, a video-on-demand (VoD) library and broadband internet.

According to Essa Al Haddad, chief marketing officer at Etisalat UAE, Etisalat’s FTTH rollout in the UAE positions Abu Dhabi to become the first capital city in the world with 100% fibre deployment by the end of this year. UAE will be one of the first countries in the world to have nationwide fibre-optics coverage by 2011.