UAE: 'Technical glitch' caused outage for thousands of Internet users; services restored, says Etisalat

UAE telecom provider Etisalat confirmed on Friday that "all Internet services are back to normal", after an outage caused thousands of netizens connectivity issues last evening.

Technical teams were "able to fix the issues resulting from the technical glitch that caused partial disruption to our network," it said in a short statement on Twitter. "Our gratitude and appreciation goes out to our customers for their understanding," it added.

Thousands of netizens in the UAE reported difficulties with Internet connectivity on Etisalat networks on Thursday evening.

According to Downdetector.ae, the reports began to trickle in around 9.30pm. In little more than an hour, the website had recorded over 2,000 complaints that users were unable to access Internet services via Etisalat.

Most of the complaints recorded were for landline Internet connections (75 per cent), while a minority also noted they were struggling to connect to services on their mobiles (17 per cent). Eight per cent reported no signal.

Residents also took to Twitter to air their grievances, asking fellow users if they were experiencing the same issues and tagging Etisalat’s official support handle for help.

At the time, an official statement from Etisalat UAE said: “Currently, the Internet service is experiencing a technical problem. We apologise for any inconvenience you may encounter with some apps, as we are working with the relevant authorities to resolve the issue.”

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