A thriving Gulf-Maldivian joint venture

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The Maldives’ first telecommunications company, Dhiraagu was established in 1988 and is credited with introducing mobile telephony and internet to the country. Ismail Rasheed, Dhiraagu’s top executive, explains more.

What should the GCC know about Dhiraagu’s next steps?
As a key enabler of the tourism industry, this year we plan to further enhance connectivity, data speeds and the quality of mobile broadband service; we’ll also continue to expand fixed broadband services and increase our enterprise services portfolio. Given that our majority shareholder is Batelco Group from Bahrain, we’re a living example of a succesful Gulf joint venture in the Maldives.

Can you name some of Dhiraagu’s recent major achievements?
In 1999, we provided connectivity across the entire Maldives. In 2012, we successfully completed a domestic submarine cable network across the country from north to south, and just last yer we became the first telecom operator to provide 3G mobile broadband coverage to every inhabited island, a project that was facilitated by our nine operation centers. Today we have the widest 4G coverage in the country.

What makes Dhiraagu the backbone of the Maldives’ telecom sector?
Dhiraagu is a full-service provider of all info-communication services. A domestic submarine cable across the country forms the backbone of our network. We have the widest fixed and mobile broadband network across the country, providing 100 percent of the population with mobile broadband service. We provide total ICT solutions to corporations and businesses, which include data centre hosting and managed services.