Our commitment through our commercial services
Alo
Imagine being able to call home without any complicated fuss, to be able to hear a loved ones’ voice after spending years apart from them. For many of the expatriate labor workforce living in the UAE, simply being able to pick up a phone and dial their home country is considered a luxury – but we’ve taken up an initiative to change that.
In partnership with the Permanent Committee of Labour Affairs in Dubai, we’ve come up with ‘alo’, a Pay as you Go mobile service scheme that is tailor-made for the men and women who work so hard to keep our city turning. With no joining fees, the multilingual SIM pack is easy to keep within a pocket, and has been specifically cost-rated with their paypackets in mind; there are no renewal costs, no annual fees, and it comes with a pre-loaded AED10. We sell ‘alo’ in various labor camps, right on the laborers’ doorstep for their convenience.
Benefits of "alo" include Pay by the Second, rather than having those seconds rounded up to minutes, and an optional 15% extra credit on every recharge that’s made using du’s WOW cards.
International Labor Day
Yet another way that we’ve been giving back to the community is through getting involved with the Ministry of Labour’s International Labour Day activities. To date, we’ve acted as an official sponsor for their various sporting activities, which engage labourers from across the UAE.
m-health initiative
We’re always striving to ensure that we’re giving back to the community, and through our new mobile health program, the Smart Health portfolio, we’ve found the perfect way to do so by enhancing health within the UAE community using our core business. In its early stages at present, our mobile health program will grow to service the entire UAE, including Health Text – in association with PurpleTeal, Inc, a US-based health services provider. Health Text will offer a bouquet of SMS text-based tips, suggestions and advice leading to a better and healthy lifestyle. The portfolio also includes a physician-staffed call center run by US company Mobile Doctors 24-7, which is to be launched at a later stage, in addition to health monitoring equipment that will communicate between the patients’ homes and local hospitals through the latest telecom technology from Ericsson.
Special services to the speech impaired
As part of our commitment to the UAE, we felt the need to extend our services one step further, by helping those with speech difficulties to get better connected with their loved ones and generally lead a better quality of life. While most of us take talking for granted, having a speech impediment makes communication, especially something as simple as a phone call, difficult, and so our involvement in ‘Echo of Silence’ – a project lead by Ministry of Social Affairs and TRA and in agreement with British Telecom (BT) - allows us to be able to offer such individuals the chance to better integrate into and become fruitful members of their community.
We take great pride in our involvement in this venture, which will soon be introduced to the UAE.
Business support to community initiatives
Free of charge up-linking of Dubai International Holy Qur’an Awards on annual basis by du broadcast services division, within du
We understand how important religion is, and so we’re pleased to be able to further enrich the Muslim community’s experience with our broadcast services through our annual, free of charge up-linking of the annual Dubai International Holy Qur’an Awards, which is broadcasted every year during the Holy month of Ramadan. Any home receiving signals from the Arabsat Badr 4 satellite will receive free, live, 24/7 coverage of the event, which features Holy Qur’an memorization contests as well as other ceremonies that firmly celebrate the Islamic faith.