The number of Internet subscribers in the Arab World has increased significantly over the past year, alongside an even bigger increase in available international Internet bandwidth, a recent report by Arab Advisors Group indicates. Although the overall bandwidth crunch in the Arab World is indeed easing, the pace of improvement is faster in some countries than others.
The eight Arab countries of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had more than 1.08 million Internet subscribers in total by year-end 2001. These subscribers surfed the Internet utilizing a total combined international Internet bandwidth of 1.9 gigabits per second (Gbps), which is unevenly distributed amongst them.
Between 2000 and 2001, 348,000 new subscribers were registered in these eight markets, a 47 percent increase. Available International Internet bandwidth grew at a faster rate of 154 percent to add 1.195 Gbps in available bandwidth for the eight markets.
“This increase in total bandwidth to total subscribers is a change for the better, especially in the UAE, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, where the percent growth in bandwidth was at least more than double the growth rate of subscribers”, according to analyst Shahin Shahin.
The report calculates a Regional Bandwidth Index for the eight markets in January 2002, by dividing a country’s bandwidth share by its accounts share. Results higher than one indicate a better than regional average bandwidth per subscriber. The higher the result, the better the bandwidth availability per account.
When comparing these figures with the August 2001 Index, the Arab Advisors Group’s analysts noted that index scores for Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Morocco slipped, while the Emirati, Omani and Saudi scores improved.
In August 2001, Morocco led the Arab Advisors Group’s Internet Regional Bandwidth index rankings with a score of 3.701, followed by Egypt with 2.116, Jordan with 1.497, Oman’s 1.381, the UAE with 0.738, Saudi Arabia with 0.59, Lebanon with 0.429 and Syria closing the list with 0.19.
The results for the January 2002 index show that Oman jumped to lead the pack with a 3.448 index score, followed by Morocco with 1.944, Egypt with 1.712, UAE with 1.363, Saudi Arabia’s 0.604 score, Jordan’s 0.509, Lebanon’s 0.207 and Syria at 0.110. — (menareport.com)
© 2002 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
