Travellers landing in Dubai or Abu Dhabi this week may have done a double take at their phone screen: instead of 'e&', the network name reads 'Etisalat 50'. Nothing has gone wrong with your roaming. The UAE's original mobile operator is marking 50 years since its founding in 1976, and it has temporarily revived the name it started with.

For those who missed the corporate soap opera: Etisalat — an Arabic word meaning 'communications' or 'connections' — was the young country's first telecoms provider, set up to link the emirates to each other and to the outside world. In February 2022 it rebranded as 'e&', part of a push to reposition itself from a regional phone company into a global technology and investment group. Now, for its golden anniversary, the company says it's returning to its roots. 'We are Etisalat. We always have been. We always will be,' it told followers in a post on its official Instagram account.

The anniversary message traces the network's growth from the first telephone lines stretched across the desert in 1976, through the region's first mobile network, to bringing the internet to the UAE and helping make it one of the most fibre-connected countries on earth. The company thanked its customers, partners and staff for five decades of trust, and signed off with 'The next fifty are yours.'

For visitors, the practical takeaway is simple: the network you're roaming onto works exactly as before. Whether your phone displays e& or Etisalat 50, it's the same infrastructure — and in practical terms, one of the fastest and most reliable mobile networks you'll encounter anywhere. Tourists picking up a local SIM or eSIM at Dubai International will still deal with the same provider, whatever it calls itself on the sign.

It's a nice bit of context for anyone travelling in the Emirates this season, too. The UAE's telecom story mirrors the country's own: a young nation in the mid-1970s, a rapid leap to mobile and fibre, and now a tech group operating well beyond the Gulf. The 'Etisalat 50' badge is essentially a birthday banner, so don't be surprised if it quietly disappears once the celebrations wind down. In the meantime, if a fellow traveller asks why their signal bar says 'Etisalat 50', you can tell them they've roamed onto a network that's exactly half a century old.

Story via What's On Dubai.