Big rise in internet subscriber numbers

Energy Tuesday 16/July/2019 21:29 PM
By: Times News Service
Big rise in internet subscriber numbers

Muscat: The total internet subscriptions, excluding active mobile subscriptions, surged by 5.1 per cent in the Sultanate to touch 446,039 subscriptions in May 2019, up from 424,284 by the end of December 2018.
Of this, fixed broadband internet connections, which have more than 256 kilobytes speed, increased by 5.2 per cent to 443,884 in May 2019 whereas fixed narrowband internet connections, which have less than 256 kilobytes speed, fell by 3.3 per cent to 2,155 subscriptions at the end of May 2019, according to the latest data released by National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI).
The number of active mobile broadband subscribers rose by 0.9 per cent to 4.150 million in May 2019, from 4.113 million subscribers by the end of December 2018.
Total fixed telephone lines rose by 2.6 per cent to 574,627 at the end of May 2019, from 560,326 subscribers by end-December 2018.
According to the NCSI report, the number of voice-over-internet protocol (VoIP) lines surged by 6.7 per cent to 192,300 from 180,186 subscribers by the end of December 2018. Further, analogue fixed telephone lines rose by 0.2 per cent to 324,926 from 324,129 subscribers during the period under review.
Public payphones remained unchanged at 6,801 whereas ISDN channels rose by 2.9 per cent to 48,949. The total number of mobile subscribers increased by 2.5 per cent to 6.601 million by the end of May 2019 compared to 6.440 million subscribers by the end of December 2018. -ONA
Of this, postpaid mobile connections increased by 3.2 per cent to 735,316 from 712,622 subscribers in December 2018. Pre-paid mobile connections also rose by 2.4 per cent to 5.866 million from 5.728 million at the end of December 2018.
Also, number of subscribers of resellers rose by 2.5 per cent to 776,084 from 756,799 subscribers at the end of December 2018.