The UAE could end the monopoly of Etisalat and du in the country’s telecommunications sector and admit new operators in line with an international agreement, according to telecom authorities.

For the time being, there are no plans to grant licences to any new operator and those two companies will continue to be the sole service providers in the second largest Arab economy until 2015, the Telecom Regulatory Authority (TRA) said.

“This situation could change in 2016 as the government has offered an official commitment to the World Trade Organization that Etisalat and du will continue to monopolize the telecom sector until the end of 2015 at the earliest,” TRA director Mohammed Al Ghanem told the Arabic language daily Emarat Al Youm.

He said the agreement, part of an international protocol to liberalize the telecom and other sectors, stipulates that the UAE would consider liberalization of its massive telecom industry by the end of 2015 at the latest.

Once the study is completed, TRA will present it to the federal government for a final decision, Ghanem added.

“It is premature now to talk about the result of that study as it could negatively affect the current operators and related firms…at present, there are no plans to allow new operators butt this could change after that date.”

The UAE, a key Opec oil producer, has one of the largest telecom sectors in the Middle East, with a total of nearly 15.1 million subscribers at the end of May. They included around 12.3 million mobile phone users and the rest were subscribers to fixed telephone lines and internet.