New Arab region technology report reveals accelerating demand, need for faster roll-out of high-speed Internet - Time to replicate the 'mobile miracle' in broadband
New figures released on 5th of March on Geneva, at ITU's Connect Arab Summit in Doha, Qatar show that information and communication technology (ICT) uptake continues to accelerate across the Arab region, but underline the need for more effort to be put into rolling out broadband infrastructure to meet burgeoning demand from a young, tech-savvy population.
Data from ITU's ICT Adoption and Prospects in the Arab Region 2012 report reveal that, over the past five years, the number of mobile cellular subscriptions in the region has almost tripled, from 126 million in 2006, to nearly 350 million by end 2011. At the beginning of this year, regional mobile cellular penetration reached 97 per cent - ten per cent higher than global penetration.
However, the report warns that such figures can obscure wide disparities between the region's 'hyper-connected' economies and its less connected nations. For example, for every 100 people in Saudi Arabia, there are around 188 mobile phone subscriptions; in Djibouti, there are fewer than 20. More than 80 per cent of the population in Qatar uses the Internet, but the figure is below five per cent in Mauritania, Iraq and Somalia. Members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), with their higher incomes, have more than twice as many Internet users per 100 inhabitants as non-GCC countries.
Sursă: ITU
