Riyadh – Mubasher: The total number of mobile subscriptions in Saudi Arabia reached 48 million by the end of the second quarter of 2016, with penetration rate of 152%.
Prepaid subscriptions constitute the majority recording over 84% of all mobile subscriptions, according to a report released by Communications and Information Technology Commission (ICTC) on Wednesday.
Fixed telephone lines reached 3.6 million by the end of Q2-16; residential lines represented 52% or 1.9 million of the total fixed operating lines.
ICTC stated that population teledensity is about 11%, while household teledensity reached 31.1 %.
The decrease in the number of subscriptions was attributed to the competition of the mobile services in prices and variety of offerings, the report said.
The total number of mobile broadband subscriptions reached around 26.6 million by the end of Q2-16, with population penetration rate of 83.5%.
“Fixed broadband subscriptions including DSL, fixed wireless (WiMax), FTTx and other fixed lines decreased to reach around 3.06 million subscriptions at the end of Q2 2016. The Fixed broadband penetration rate stands at about 41% of households,” ICTC reported.
The number of Internet users increased to 70.4% by the end of Q2 from 41% in 2010, to reach about 22.4 million.
Higher use of social networking applications, video on demand (YouTube, snapchat) and gaming contributed to the increase in the demand for Internet services and broadband.
Subscribers are seeking higher speeds and larger packages which resulted in heavy data traffic in the past few years, according to the report.
