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Du customers facing problems

In less than six months of its launch, private mobile service provider du is being accused of unsatisfactory services.

Subscribers are complaining of poor network coverage, confusion over numbers and an inability to complete international phone calls.

“I do a lot of travelling as part of my job, and sometimes I have to make calls on my way to other emirates. There are occasions when I am going from Dubai to Abu Dhabi and I find that there is no network coverage. The same has happened on my way to Ras Al Khaimah and Fujairah,” says Manish, who is a fees investigator at Mashreqbank.

Manish says once he was returning from Fujairah and the du network on his mobile disappeared and was replaced with an Omani network.

Manish also highlighted how having the same number with du and Etisalat may cause some confusion as there seems to be no segregation between them: “I have the same number with both network providers, but of course with different prefixes. Some of my customers have my Etisalat number stored on their mobiles because I had it earlier, and when I call them using du, the Etisalat number appears on their devices whereas a different number should appear altogether.”

“Perhaps du should have begun with a small customer base and resolved any technical hiccups before expanding operations,” Manish suggested.

A journalist working in Dubai said his wife could not make calls to India from her du connection.

“When she contacted du representatives she was told that some of the mobile service providers in India had yet to be updated. She was then told that she should call up these same service providers abroad and request that they clear up the matter, which we found to be odd,” he expressed.

A Sharjah resident outlined that she bought a du SIM card from an outlet in a shopping mall but they failed to inform du operators to activate the card.

Responding to the issues raised, du CEO Osman Sultan told Khaleej Times that the organisation understands that its customers have been experiencing some network problems.

“As many of the customers will notice, du network coverage has increased and improved significantly day by day with constant optimisation and with the help of the feedback received from customers for specific areas. We do acknowledge that there are areas that are not covered in Sharjah but du is improving the network coverage,” Sultan added.

With regards to difficulties with international calls, Sultan explained that international calls can be made and received by customers unless a customer has requested the feature ‘international call barring.