U.A.E. ranks top in Arab connectivity survey

Robert Hamilton
For Al-Shorfa.com
2008-06-30

An Emirati woman trader phones as she watches a quotation board at the Abu Dhabi stock exchange. (Photo by AFP/Getty Images)

The United Arab Emirates has been ranked the most ‘connected’ country in the Arab world, according to a new report that assesses household fixed line, cellular and internet penetration rates in each country.

“Convergence presents us with a great opportunity that the media and telecom business can greatly benefit from, as new sources of revenue are emerging,” said Engineer Basem Rousan, the Jordanian Minister of Information and Communications Technology, at the unveiling of the Total Country Connectivity Measure (TCCM) report for 2008.

“The government is committed to providing a flexible legislative and regulatory environment that nurtures competitiveness and reflects the growing convergence in the ICT sector,” he added. The TCCM shows the extent of connectivity of individuals in a certain country whether via fixed lines, cellular lines and/or internet. There is an overlap as many individuals will be using these technologies simultaneously, which accounts for the high percentage scores.

However, the measure still yields an accurate and informative picture of the level of ICT services penetration in each country. For example, if a country has a TCCM measure of 60 percent this indicates that at least 40 percent of the population is not users of any of the three services constituting the measure. While a TCCM score of more than 100 percent is very positive, it does not mean that the whole population uses the services.

“As usual, the main driver in the increasing TCCM scores by end of 2007 in the Arab world was cellular subscribers’ growth, with internet services contributing a much lower portion of the increase,” said Arab Advisors Group founder and general manager Jawad Jalal Abbassi. “Still, there were some bright spots such as the growth in broadband in Saudi Arabia and fixed wireless services in Morocco that contributed greatly to an enhanced TCCM score in the two countries.”

A comparison of the 2007 and 2006 rankings reveals that Bahrain moved up one place from third, while Saudi Arabia also jumped one place to third. Qatar slipped to fourth place down, from second in 2006, although this was largely due to the restatement of official population figures. Kuwait maintained fifth position, while Libya switched positions with Oman to take sixth place, up from seventh in 2006.

Jordan stood steady in eighth place, while Algeria moved ahead of Lebanon into ninth place and Lebanon slipped to tenth. Tunisia, Syria and Egypt maintained their 11th, 12th, and 13th places respectively.

The fixed wireless boom in Morocco propelled it to 14th place ahead of Palestine which slipped to 15th place. Iraq remained in 16th place, while Mauritania switched places with Yemen taking 17th place and leaving 18th place for Yemen. Sudan ranked last – as in 2006 – in 19th place.

“Enhancing the growth of the Arab broadband internet markets, a prerequisite for any knowledge-based economy, will require coordinated and intensive policies and initiatives,” Abbassi added as the report was unveiled at the Fifth Annual Media and Telecommunications Convergence Conference, which took place in Amman at the beginning of June 2008.

Bookmarking

Please comment on this article so that we can improve the experience of viewing this website.