(MENAFN- Muscat Daily) The latest report by Broadband Commission for Digital Development, set up by International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and UNESCO, ranks Oman and GCC countries high on the rate of broadband penetration and its socio-economic impacts.
According to the report released in September end, Oman is ranked 19th in the world in percentage of individuals using the Internet in developing countries (60 per cent). Oman gets the 22nd position in mobile broadband penetration per 100 inhabitants (a 56.7 penetration rate).
Qatar (88.1 per cent), Bahrain (88 per cent) and UAE (85 per cent) are the top three in the list for the percentage of individuals using Internet in developing countries. While Kuwait (79.2 per cent) occupies the seventh rank and Saudi Arabia is 26th (54 per cent).
Singapore, Japan, Finland, Korea and Sweden take top five ranks with highest mobile broadband penetration, averaging more than a hundred. Qatar is ranked 13th (72.1 per cent penetration), Bahrain 16th (67.1), UAE 30th (50.9), and Saudi Arabia 37th (42.8).
According to the report, the number of mobile subscriptions is set to exceed 7bn and overtake the total world population in 2014. Mobile subscriptions in Africa and the Middle East alone exceeded 1bn in Q1 of 2013.
It adds that growth in mobile broadband is the fastest growing sector in information and communication technology (ICT) domain and over the last two years, the mobile industry has added 1bn more subscriptions.
Mobile broadband subscriptions overtook fixed broadband subscriptions in 2008, and show an astonishingly high growth rate of some 30 per cent per year, exceeding fixed broadband subscriptions by a ratio of 3:1 (up from 2:1 two years ago).
ITU predicts there will be 2.1bn mobile broadband subscriptions by the end of 2013, equivalent to one-third of the total global stock of mobile cellular subscriptions. The Broadband Commission has set certain goals to be achieved by 2015, chief among them being a national broadband strategy or plan.
In Oman, the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) launched the National Broadband Strategy in 2010, which aims to introduce a broadband connection into every home and business.
Dr Hamed Salim al Rawahi, executive president, TRA, stated, ''It is the wish of the government that every citizen has access to reliable, high-speed broadband Internet. A major challenge we face in meeting this target is servicing our rural areas. The difficult terrain here makes that difficult but as technology improves our ability to reach those remote areas will improve.''
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