Du be Du be II

It has only taken two weeks and about a dozen phone calls to Du's help line (at Dh 0.30 a pop) to get my voice mail activated. Finally last night, after a protracted telephone call I achieved satisfaction.

Now all that remains is to get international roaming sorted. I am told by Du that everything is active and I should have had no difficulty in getting mobile roaming in Qatar or Thailand.

Alas, this was not the case. On my recent visit to south east Asia my attempts to phone the UAE were met with a recorded message in English telling me that "international calls are barred, at [my] request." An email to Du resulted in the traditional robot response followed by stony silence. And upon my return to the Emirates, I find that Du is allegedly unaware of any barring password.

Any help from someone who understands GSM technology would be appreciated. Naturally, it will be impossible to test whether or not roaming is working until I'm abroad again. And that won't be for many months.