Saturday 27 / April / 2024
Muscat: Statistics issued by the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI) indicated an increase in postpaid mobile phone subscriptions by 9.7 percent to 1.78 subscriptions.
The number of prepaid mobile phone subscriptions also increased by 1.5 percent to reach 5.19 million subscriptions. Among these subscriptions were 3.93 million from operators and 1.26 million subscriptions from resale. This represented an increase in the total number of mobile phone subscriptions by 3.5 percent at the end of 2023. The total number of mobile phone subscriptions (postpaid and prepaid) reached 6.98 subscriptions.
The number of active mobile broadband subscriptions recorded an increase of 5.5 percent until the end of December 2023 compared to the same period in 2022. Fixed Internet service subscriptions also recorded an increase of 4.6 percent to reach 563,708 subscriptions compared to the same period in 2022.
The total subscriptions to fixed broadband service (more than 256KB/s) amounted to about 561,983 subscriptions at the end of 2023, an increase of 4.7 percent compared to the end of 2022, while the number of subscriptions via low-speed Internet (less than 256 KB/s) decreased. This includes telephone calls and some rented Internet lines at a rate of 0.1 percent, reaching 1,725 subscriptions.
Statistics further indicated an increase in the number of fixed-line telephone subscriptions at the end of 2023 by 2.9 percent to reach 579,270 subscriptions as compared to the end of 2022.
With regard to analogue fixed-line telephone subscriptions, which include prepaid and postpaid, their number decreased at the end of 2023 by 4.8 percent to reach 225,416 subscriptions compared to the same period of the previous year. The number of fixed-line telephone subscriptions connected to Internet Protocol (IP) technology reached 296,628 subscriptions during the same period, recording an increase of 10.3 percent compared to the end of 2022.
Muscat Governorate ranked first in the number of analogue fixed telephone lines at 68 percent by the end of 2023, followed by the Dhofar Governorate in second place at 7.9 percent, while the North Al Batinah Governorate registered a rate of 7.4 percent and the percentage in the remaining governorates reached 16.7 percent.
The NCSI statistics further showed that the number of subscriptions to digital network channels for integrated services recorded a decrease of 0.1 percent at the end of 2023 to reach 49,722 subscriptions corresponding to the same period in 2022, while the number of fixed wireless subscriptions decreased by 18.8 percent to reach 703 subscriptions compared to the year 2022, while the number of public phone subscriptions stabilised at 6,800.
