Tourist SIM and eSIM in Dubai: What to Buy and Where?

The regulator’s own words are the ones to read first, and they are not about data.

The UAE’s Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority treats internet calling as a licensed activity. Its published position: “VoIP Services are considered Telecommunications Services”, regulated by TDRA’s own VoIP Regulatory Policy. And then the sentence that should change how an Indian family plans a trip:

“Unless this software/application is provided by a Licensee or in collaboration with them or is approved by TDRA, it is very likely that it is illegal to use this software/application to make Voice and Video calls over the Internet.”

Read that sentence twice, because both of its qualifiers do work. TDRA says very likely, not is. And the activity it scopes is narrow: to make Voice and Video calls over the Internet. It is not a statement about messaging, and it does not say a particular app works or does not work. What it says is that the authority maintains a list of approved applications on its website, and that using an unapproved one to place internet voice and video calls is very likely illegal.

This page names no application, in either direction. Not one that works, not one that does not. TDRA maintains the list and grants the approvals, so its contents are the regulator’s to change without telling this page. An article is read for years, and a list printed here would be a snapshot presented as a rule. Read TDRA’s own list instead, close to travel.

The list itself is published on TDRA’s internet guidelines page, at https://tdra.gov.ae/en/About/tdra-sectors/information-and-digital-government/policy-and-programs-department/internet-guidelines. Open it yourself close to travel. This page gives you the address rather than the contents for the reason above.

What that means for your planning is the useful part, and it survives whatever the list says on the day you look. TDRA’s own wording also sets out three ways an application can be lawful, and they are worth separating. It can be provided by a Licensee, meaning one of the two operators offers it. It can be provided in collaboration with a licensee. Or it can be approved by TDRA directly. A family does not need to work out which route any given app took. It needs to know that lawfulness here is a status granted by a regulator, not a property of the app.

Do not build your trip on a specific calling app. If your plan for staying in touch with family in India, or with each other across a mall, depends on one particular app working, you have a plan with a single point of failure that a regulator controls. Build it on a local number and ordinary calls instead, and treat anything else as a bonus.

The alternative most families default to, leaving the Indian phone on international roaming, is the most expensive line in this entire subject and the one that arrives on a bill weeks later. It sits alongside the other charges that land after the price you agreed, in the costs that reach you after you are home.

What a visitor actually needs to buy a local line

Three published requirements, and they do not fully agree with each other. That is worth knowing before you queue.

The UAE government portal states: “Visitors need to provide a copy of their passport and UAE visa in order to obtain a local SIM.” Its page was last updated Aug. 27, 2026.

TDRA’s FAQs, listing registration requirements by customer type, give for visitors: “Passport or GCC National ID for citizens of Gulf Cooperation Council countries.” No visa is named.

e&, the operator formerly trading as Etisalat, states for its Visitor Line that a “Valid passport and visa” are needed.

So two of the three name the visa and one does not. This page does not know which counter applies which. Carry both, on paper and on your phone. That is this page’s reconciliation, not anybody’s published rule, and it costs you nothing to follow.

One more rule families miss entirely, and note where the duty sits. TDRA states: “If a visitor fails to submit valid and verifiable registration information within 48 hours of their subscription’s expiry, the licensed service provider must disconnect the SIM and all associated services.” The obligation to cut you off is the operator’s, not yours. What that means in practice is that a line going dead near the end of a longer trip is a registration problem before it is a fault, and the operator is the one to call about it.

How many lines a family can hold

Two separate limits, from two different bodies, and they are not the same number and must not be added together.

TDRA, on registration: “Visitors: Up to two SIM cards per service provider.”

e&, on its Visitor Line product: a maximum of “2 Visitor Line SIMs per passport.”

The first is a regulatory limit per operator. The second is a product limit per passport. They happen to share a figure and they are answering different questions, so do not combine them into a family total.

The practical consequence is simple and it is good news for a group. Both limits attach to a person rather than to a booking. TDRA’s is per visitor per service provider; e&’s is per passport. Neither is a household allowance, so a large party is not dividing two lines between everybody. What it does mean is that each adult who wants a line has to be present with their own passport, because the line registers against that document and not against whoever is paying. If your party is large enough that gathering everybody with their own passport is itself a logistics problem, plan the SIM stop as a scheduled errand rather than as something that happens on the way to somewhere else.

For most families the honest answer is fewer lines than they expect. One or two working numbers, with everyone else on hotel and mall wifi, covers an ordinary week.

Where to buy, and the one product with a published figure

The UAE government portal names the two operators and the two products: “Etisalat and du provide mobile phone and internet services in the UAE.” Etisalat offers the Visitor Line plan and du offers the Tourist Plan. On where to buy: “Visitors to the UAE can buy the plans at Etisalat or du shops located at airports in the UAE.”

e& adds that the Visitor Line is also sold at its business centres and outlets, at partner locations, and online with 3D secured credit and debit cards. Its stated validity is 28 days, and it can be purchased again.

That online option is worth a moment. Paying for a foreign telecom product on an Indian card, through a 3D secure step that sends a one-time password to a number you are about to stop using, is a small trap. Sort out which card you are using for online payments abroad before you leave, and which of your cards clears a 3D secure step overseas is the page for that.

This page publishes no plan price, in any currency, and no “from” figure. Prices move, this page verified none, and a price printed here would be the thing readers trust most and the thing most likely to be wrong.

There is exactly one allowance figure this page will publish, because an operator announced it directly. On Sept. 16, 2024, e& announced a self-activated instant eSIM for visitors carrying “10GB of complimentary data valid for a day”, activated by scanning a QR code and connecting via facial recognition, “as soon as they pass through immigration.”

Note both halves of that. Ten gigabytes is generous. Valid for a day is the half that gets dropped everywhere else. It is an arrival-day product, not a holiday product, and treating it as your connectivity plan for the week is the mistake it invites.

Note also where it activates: after immigration, not before. So the arrival sequence has a fixed order, and what happens between the aircraft door and the arrivals hall comes first whether you like it or not. Plan to be uncontactable from landing until you clear the counters.

du, and why this page says less about it

The UAE government portal names du’s Tourist Plan alongside the Visitor Line. This page publishes no detail about it: no price, no allowance, no validity.

The reason is mechanical rather than editorial. du’s tourist page is closed to automated retrieval, so nothing on it was read for this article. Rather than describe a product from second-hand summaries, this page names the operator and stops.

Ask du directly on 155, which is the contact number the government portal publishes for it, or at a du shop at the airport. The portal gives Etisalat’s numbers as 101 or 144. Those three numbers are worth writing down before you fly, because the moment you need them is the moment you have no data.

The four routes, side by side

Everything above, in one place. The last column says what this page checked, not what is true of the product in general. The price column carries no figure in any row, and that is deliberate rather than an omission. This page verified no price, and a page that fills that column with a figure it has not checked is doing you a disservice rather than a favour.

Route	What it gives you	Documents	Price	What this page verified
e& Visitor Line	A local number and a plan, 28-day validity, repurchasable, max 2 per passport	Valid passport and visa	Not published here	Validity, SIM limit, documents and sales channels, from e&
du Tourist Plan	A local number and a plan	Passport and UAE visa, per the government portal	Not published here	Only that it exists and is named by the UAE government portal
e& instant visitor eSIM	10 GB of data valid for a day, activated after immigration	Self-activated by QR code and facial recognition	Announced by e& as complimentary. No figure verified here	Announced Sept. 16, 2024. Confirm with e& that it still runs before you rely on it
Free wifi only	Hotel and mall coverage, no number	None	Not published here	Only the portal’s statement that most hotels and malls provide it

One caution on the third row. That eSIM was announced in September 2024 and this page has not confirmed it is still offered on the terms announced. Treat it as a thing to ask e& about on arrival rather than as a plan you have already made.

What free wifi actually covers, and what it does not

The government portal’s position is that “Most hotels offer free Wi-Fi to their guests” and that “Most malls and many other public places also provide free Wi-Fi.”

That is genuinely true and it tempts families into skipping a SIM entirely. Before you do, be clear about what wifi does not cover.

It does not cover the walk between places. Which is exactly where a family separates, where a taxi needs summoning and where a map is needed. How much walking sits between a station and a gate is not a small question here, and how far the station actually is from the entrance shows why.

It does not give you a number anyone can ring. A delivery, a hotel, a driver and a clinic all ask for a phone number, and an app account tied to your Indian number does not always accept an international one abroad.

It leaves the emergency call an open question. The UAE government portal publishes 998 as the national ambulance number. Whether a given handset can reach it over wifi alone, on a foreign SIM with no local service, is not something this page can tell you, and a hotel lobby at 2 a.m. is not where you want to find out. A local line removes the question. Reaching a doctor or an ambulance for a child here sets out the rest of that sequence.

That last point is why this page’s recommendation is at least one local line per travelling family, regardless of how good the hotel wifi is. The cost of being wrong about it is not symmetrical.

The things a local number quietly unlocks

Beyond emergencies, two ordinary parts of a Dubai week work better with a UAE number than without one.

Ride-hailing and taxi apps. These are the tools that decide whether a family moves cheaply or expensively across a day, and how family transport is priced before you commit to it sets out the comparison a working phone lets you act on.

Delivery to a hotel room. Groceries, water and a late dinner after a long day all route through platforms that want a number they can call at the door. The rules that govern the box on the back of the bike covers what Dubai requires of the delivery itself.

What this page will not tell you

Seven things, and each one is a decision rather than an oversight.

No application named as working or blocked. TDRA maintains the approved list and revises it. Any list printed here would age into a false statement, and the honest instruction is to check the regulator’s list rather than an article.

No price, in any currency, for any plan. Including a “from” figure. None was verified.

No data allowance except the 10 GB e& announced, which is the only allowance this page found published by the operator selling it.

No detail on du’s Tourist Plan, because du’s page is closed to automated retrieval and nothing on it was read.

No workaround. Nothing about VPNs, proxies or routing around a restriction. TDRA regulates this and a travel page has no business advising a family to work around a regulator.

No penalty or enforcement claim. No source consulted publishes what happens to a visitor who uses a non-approved application, so this page does not speculate about it in either direction.

No airport counter location, terminal or opening hours, and no coverage or speed comparison between the two operators. None was verified, and none of it is stable enough to publish for a page read months ahead of a trip.

Before you land

Carry your passport and your visa copy, on paper and on your phone. Two of the three published requirements name both.

Put a second line on a second adult’s handset if you can. The recovery sequence when a phone disappears is in the order to work through after a phone disappears, and suspending the Indian SIM is part of it, which needs a phone that still works.

Write down 101, 144 and 155 somewhere that is not your phone. Those are the numbers the government portal publishes for Etisalat and du.

Expect to be offline from the aircraft door to the arrivals hall. The instant eSIM activates after immigration, not before, so nobody at home should expect a message until then.

Treat a one-day allowance as a one-day allowance. If you take the 10 GB arrival eSIM, buy the actual plan too.

Check TDRA’s approved application list before you travel, and plan as though your usual calling app may not be on it.

Buy at least one local line per family, even if the hotel wifi is excellent. The argument is the emergency call, not convenience.

If you would rather land with the connectivity already sorted rather than queue at an airport counter with tired children, that is a fair thing to ask a package to handle, and our Dubai family trips with the arrival logistics handled in advance are arranged with that in mind. It does not change the documents you must carry, and it does not change TDRA’s rules on what you can use once you are online.