Etisalat UAE upgrade: What faster uploads mean for your phone

Dubai - Etisalat UAE has unveiled a groundbreaking upgrade to its smartphone network, promising to deliver three times faster uploads. This development enables users to send high-resolution photos, videos, and large files more swiftly. Etisalat UAE claims to be the first operator globally to commercially deploy 2×2 uplink MIMO with carrier aggregation for smartphones on its 5.5G network.

Unfortunately, the company has not specified which smartphone models are compatible with this upgrade, nor has it outlined the coverage areas or provided exact upload speed enhancements. As mobile usage patterns evolve, the demand for faster upload speeds has become increasingly critical. The announcement highlights that while traditional mobile networks have primarily focused on enhancing downlink capacity, the way people use their smartphones now creates a growing need for stronger uplink performance.

This is driven by the increasing volume and type of content that users share. The new upgrade achieves this by enabling a supported phone to transmit two simultaneous data streams and combining network capacity across different frequency bands. Marwan Bin Shakar, Chief Technology Officer at Etisalat UAE, emphasized that this upgrade caters to the changing mobile experiences where smartphones are not just consuming content but also creating and sharing richer data in real-time, particularly to AI and cloud applications.

This upgrade is expected to benefit users by shortening the wait time when sending content from a compatible smartphone. This includes uploading videos, sharing photographs, and transferring large documents to online services. However, the company qualified this claim by stating that not every transfer will achieve the threefold increase in upload speed, and they did not provide specific timings for particular file sizes.

Ultimately, this upgrade is intended for customers who own supported devices and are interested in faster upload speeds for their mobile activities. While the announcement does not provide a list of compatible handsets or explain how users can check their eligibility, it does indicate that many experiences, especially those involving cloud-based AI functions, can benefit from this faster upload capacity.