UAE achieves 199% mobile subscription rate in 2011

Dubai The UAE’s active mobile subscribers grew 7.33 per cent to 11.72 million in 2011 compared to 10.92 million in 2010, according to the Telecommunication Regulatory Authority’s (TRA) latest report.

The penetration rate rose from 197 per cent in 2010 to 199 per cent in 2011.

“Despite high mobile penetration, the UAE telecoms market still presents a significant growth potential, particularly in the broadband segment. Growing penetration of smart devices coupled with relatively young and urban population complements potential in this segment,” Bhanu Chaddha, senior research analyst (telecommunications) at research firm IDC, told Gulf News.

The telecommunications sector’s contribution to the UAE economy fell from 5.3 per cent to 4.9 per cent last year. The sector contributed Dh26 billion to the GDP.

The TRA changed its way of calculating the penetration rates in the UAE in April.

It now bases its calculation for the monthly penetration of telecommunications services (fixed, mobile and internet) on the UAE population figures supplied by the Ministry of Economy. These figures were based on the last nationwide census undertaken in 2005 and updated annually using a TRA calculated yearly growth rate of six per cent.

According to the report, the UAE had over 1.8 million fixed line subscriptions and the fixed line penetration rate reached 31 per cent in 2011 while the number of internet service subscriptions increased 10.5 per cent to over 1.32 million, registering a penetration rate of 56.4 per cent.

“The percentage of internet subscriptions connected by fibre technology increased by 70.8 per cent as customers were migrated from copper networks to new advanced networks,” the report said.

In 2011, the share of postpaid subscriptions reached 12 per cent of total mobile subscriptions compared to 11 per cent in 2010.