Your callers do not all speak Arabic
About 88.5% of people living in the UAE are expatriates, and the four largest groups are Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Filipino. An agent that handles Arabic and English handles a minority of the calls a Dubai business actually receives. Ours was built for Indian languages first, which turns out to be exactly what the Gulf needs next to its Arabic.
The languages a Gulf contact centre actually runs on
The same agent takes all of these — and switches mid-sentence, because that is how people here actually talk. It is one configuration, not seven agents behind a menu.
Who lives in the UAE
2025 resident population
- Indian38%
- Pakistani17%
- Filipino7%
- Other expatriate26.5%
- Emirati11.5%
Expatriates are 88.5% of the population. The three named groups are the shares the page cites; everyone else expatriate is one bucket rather than a figure we have not checked.
- 01
Arabic — Gulf, Najdi, Egyptian, Modern Standard
Dialect-tagged, not one generic Arabic. A Gulf caller hears Gulf.
- 02
English — UAE / Gulf
The working language of most Dubai and Doha offices.
- 03
Hindi
38% of residentsIndians are the largest group in the UAE — about 38% of residents.
- 04
Urdu
17% of residentsPakistani residents, about 17%.
- 05
Malayalam
Kerala's diaspora is concentrated in the Gulf. Proven on live calls.
- 06
Tamil
South Indian workforce across construction, retail and logistics.
- 07
Tagalog / Filipino
7% of residentsFilipino residents, about 7% — heavily represented in service roles.
Inbound is the part you can switch on this month
The UAE's telemarketing rules — Cabinet Decisions 56 and 57 of 2024, in force since 27 August 2024 — are aimed at unsolicited outbound marketing. Calls a customer makes to you, and calls made at a customer's request, are not that. An agent answering the line after hours, catching the calls nobody picked up, booking appointments and routing the rest sits outside the telemarketing regime entirely.
It is also where the money already is. A missed call in a Dubai clinic, dealership or property office is a customer who dialled the next listing, and most Gulf businesses are losing those between six in the evening and nine the next morning — in whichever of seven languages the caller happens to speak.
Nobody can sell you a UAE number that dials out
A UAE geographic number bought through a communications platform is inbound-only — the carrier's own terms prohibit placing outbound calls from it, by SIP or by any other means. Saudi Arabia and Qatar sell toll-free numbers and nothing else. So when a voice-AI vendor implies it will hand you a local Gulf number and start dialling, one of those two things is not true.
What is true: outbound here runs on a number registered under your own trade licence, on your own operator's trunk. Mirakash imports that trunk — Etisalat, du, STC, Ooredoo, anything that speaks SIP — and runs the agent on it. Your numbers stay yours, your minutes stay on your operator's rate card, and we bill for the agent rather than the phone line.
What a UAE outbound campaign requires
- 01Prior authorisation to run telemarketing at all. Which body issues it depends on your activity and licence, and published readings of the 2024 decisions differ — settle it with your counsel before the first campaign, not after.
- 02Every number screened against the Do Not Call Registry before it is dialled.
- 03Calls placed only within the permitted daytime window.
- 04A local number registered to your commercial licence. An international or unregistered VoIP caller ID will not do.
Penalties under Cabinet Decision 57 of 2024 reach six figures in dirhams and can extend to suspending the activity. Saudi Arabia separately requires prior consent before a marketing call, and its data-protection regulator has been enforcing it. None of this is legal advice — the instruments are named so your counsel can check. The approvals are yours to hold; we can run a compliant campaign on top of them, we cannot obtain them for you.
What the platform does about it
Runs on your trunk
Imports your operator's SIP trunk so the agent answers and dials on your registered numbers.
Honours your suppression list
Holds it and checks it on every campaign, so a screened number stays screened.
Dials in the callee's window
09:00–18:00 for a UAE number, 09:00–21:00 for an Indian one — derived from the number, in its local time, not the server's.
Keeps the audit record
A per-second record of every call — who was dialled, what was said, what it cost — which is what an audit asks for.
What you can actually get, per country
UAE — geographic
Available through our carriers
Outbound from a UAE geographic number is prohibited by the carrier's own terms.
UAE — toll-free
Available, with paperwork
Calls to it must terminate inside the UAE.
Saudi Arabia
Toll-free (+966 800) only
Local and mobile numbers are not sold to platforms like us.
Qatar
Toll-free (+974 800) only
Same position as Saudi.
Your own operator
Etisalat, du, STC, Ooredoo — any SIP trunk
Your numbers, your minutes, your rate card. This is how outbound works here.
The awkward ones, answered
Are AI voice agents legal in the UAE?
Yes. UAE law does not carve out automated or AI-generated calls as a separate category — they fall under the same telemarketing regime as calls made by people, set by Cabinet Decisions 56 and 57 of 2024, in force since 27 August 2024. Inbound calls, and calls a consumer asked you to make, sit outside that regime entirely. This is not legal advice; the instruments are named so your counsel can read them.
Can Mirakash give me a UAE phone number my agent can dial out from?
No, and neither can anyone else buying numbers through a CPaaS. A UAE geographic number is inbound-only under the carrier's terms, and Saudi and Qatar sell toll-free numbers only. Outbound calling in the Gulf runs on a number registered to your own trade licence, on your own operator's trunk. Mirakash imports that trunk and runs the agent on it, so your numbers and your per-minute rates stay yours.
What does an outbound campaign in the UAE require?
Prior authorisation to conduct telemarketing, screening every number against the Do Not Call Registry before dialling, calling only between 09:00 and 18:00 local time, and using a local number registered under your commercial licence — an international or unregistered VoIP caller ID is not acceptable. Which body issues the authorisation depends on your licensed activity, and published readings of the 2024 decisions differ on the point, so have your counsel settle it. Penalties under Cabinet Decision 57 of 2024 run into six figures in dirhams and can extend to suspension of the activity.
Which Arabic does the agent speak?
Gulf Arabic for the UAE and Qatar, Najdi for Saudi Arabia, Egyptian as the widely-understood fallback, and Modern Standard where a customer prefers it. The dialect is chosen per agent rather than inferred, because a Gulf caller notices immediately when it is wrong.
Is call data stored in the UAE?
Not today. Mirakash runs in AWS eu-central-1 (Frankfurt), and the speech and language vendors can be pinned to EU-resident options. If your requirement is UAE residency specifically, the honest answer is a self-hosted deployment on infrastructure you control — the platform supports it, and we would rather say so than imply a region we do not operate.
UAE and Saudi mobiles are on the demo's list. The demo agents speak English, Hindi and Malayalam today; Gulf Arabic is on a booked demo, where we can set the dialect for you.
Put an agent on your line this week
A walkthrough on a real call — voice pipeline, numbers, workflows, QA and human handoff working together.