Tag: TeleGeography

TeleGeography: Middle East Sees Growth In Broadband Numbers

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The Middle East has witnessed a growth in wireless and broadband subscribers despite the global market showing a decline in 2009, a new research has found.

According to TeleGeography, a telecommunications research, analysis and consulting company, wireless subscribers in the Middle East at the end of Q1 2009 were at 232 million, which is a three per cent growth from Q4 2008 and a 22 per cent growth from Q1 of that year.

Globally, wireless subscriber additions in Q1 2009 declined slightly, as 153 million net new subscribers were added, 10 million fewer than in Q4 2008.

About 49 per cent of Q1 wireless subscriber growth came from India and China; growth slowed in many other markets, with Western and Eastern Europe being particularly slow. Countries such as France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Ukraine and the United Kingdom were all essentially flat or even in slight decline

John Dinsdale from TeleGeography Research, said: “Broadband subscribers at the end of Q1 2009 in the Middle East were at 12 million – a four per cent growth from Q4 2008 and a 25 per cent growth from Q1 2008. Globally, broadband subscriptions during the quarter were at 14 million, in line with Q4 2008 additions. China accounted for 30 per cent of global growth, while the United States was the only other country to add more than one million subscribers in the quarter.”

However, the Middle East did have to catch up in the telecom service provider segment, Dinsdale said. “Of the world’s top 20 telecom service providers, none are headquartered in the Middle East, and Saudi Telecom (STC) was the only one closest to joining the list.”

[Source: Zawya]

Middle East Has World’s Second Fastest Internet Traffic Growth

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According to a new study from TeleGeography, a telecommunications research and advisory firm, international internet traffic grew 53% between mid-2007 and mid-2008, down from 61% the preceding year.

The Middle East claims the second fastest internet traffic growth in the world, with a growth rate of 97% a year since 2005. South Asia, with its booming economies, comes in first place, with an average annual rate of 103%.
The slowest growing region of the world is North America, with a 57% annual growth rate.

Internet Traffic (TeleGeography)

For the second consecutive year, total international internet capacity grew faster than total internet traffic, leading to lower utilisation levels on many internet backbones. Between 2007 and 2008 average traffic utilisation levels decreased from 31% to 29%, while peak utilisation fell from 44% to 43%. The aggregate trend toward lower utilisation of capacity belies significant regional differences. While utilisation on international links to Europe and Asia fell in 2008, they rose in the US & Canada and Latin America where traffic growth outpaced the deployment of new internet bandwidth.

The Middle East is connected to the rest of the world by only a handful of undersea cables, and was hit hard by widespread internet blackouts in late January, after the simultaneous failure of some of these undersea cables located off Egypt’s Mediterranean coast.

Many major telecommunications company in the region are currently involved in a number of international cable projects, with more than $1 billion of investment, to augment internet capacity for the region.