Mobile phone services in the GCC are among the most affordable in the world, a United Nations report has stated.
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Measuring the Information Society report states Qatar and UAE are fifth and sixth most affordable, with regards to monthly pre-paid mobile phone services costing less than 0.3% of gross national income per capita (0.26 and 0.28, respectively) Kuwait (0.39%), Oman (0.43%), Saudi Arabia (0.65%) and Bahrain (0.73%) are in the top 26 of the 166 countries analysed by the report. On a raw costs basis, UAE and Oman also were among the cheapest in the world, at $9.06 and $9.11, respectively.
The report identifies a group of ‘most dynamic countries’, which have recorded above-average improvements in their ICT Development Index (IDI) rank over the past 12 months. These include (in order of most improved): UAE, Fiji, Cape Verde, Thailand, Oman, Qatar, Belarus, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Georgia. Denmark ranked 1 on this index followed by the Republic of Korea.
IDI values are on an average twice as high in the developed world compared with developing countries, the report adds. According to Iyad Alchammat, general manager, Cisco Oman there are some key technology trends that will drive technology growth in the coming years.
“Global data centre traffic will nearly triple, with cloud representing 76% of total data centre traffic. “By 2018, half of the world’s population will have residential Internet access, and more than half of those users’ (53%) content will be supported by personal cloud storage services,” he said, adding, “According to the Cisco Global Cloud Index (2013-2018) there are already two countries in the region that are leading the next wave of mobile broadband. Qatar and Oman rank among the top countries in the world for leading mobile network performance.”
He, however, added that this new wave also gets along with it a host of other risks. Cybercriminals are increasingly attacking Internet infrastructure rather than computers or devices. The Cisco 2014 Midyear Security report states organisations across the Middle East are at a high risk, with geopolitical events like drought, floods, and unrest creating new trends in the cyber realm. In particular, the Middle East’s energy, oil, and gas sector are seeing a sharp rise in malware attacks, it added.
© Muscat Daily 2015
