In the newspaper today there is a story about how du has received 15,000 job applications in a little over a month. For a company of currently about 500-700 employees, this is impressive.
A little history of du:
Once upon a time there was a Telecom monopoly in United Arab Emirates called Etisalat. Etisalat provided land-line services, mobile, ADSL, etc.
It was then decided that a duopoly was needed to provide choice and competition.
Sultan Osman (former head of Egypt's MobiNil) was brought in to begin this task (I think in February some time). There is a $1.1 Billion funding of du - so they should have plenty of cash to get things off the ground. Currently they are in an IPO period - the largest ever in UAE history.
A purchase of Tecom gave du some infrastructure and a $190 Million contract with Nokia will provide the entire core and much of the radio network for GSM/GPRS/EDGE and WCDMA 3G.
They aren't planning on competing with Etisalat on price, but instead bring services to the consumer and positioning themselves at a slightly different market.
Whatever the case though, having this many job applicants is a good sign for the company.
This company is an odd cat in that they are in ".com Start-up" mode, but with hugely significant backing and growth. I've never seen a company that is realizing such enormous growth potential so quickly. Usually a startup starts small and works crazy hours. As the company grows, it matures and people have longer-term vision and can carefully plan the business. du definitely has a combination of both.
Nokia is involved heavily (as mentioned above) - however, at the current time, I can't say what Microsoft's role in the company is.
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