The Arab World is “bandwidth starved”, asserts a new research by the Arab Advisors Group, showing that more than 740,000 Internet subscribers in eight Arab countries share a grand total of Internet bandwidth of no more than 777 megabits per second (mbps).
The combined Internet bandwidth of the eight Arab countries—namely Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco, Oman, Syria and the UAE—is equal to what 518 individual American cable modem subscribers have.
The Arab Advisors Group came to this figure by dividing each country’s share of the total Internet bandwidth available by its share of the total subscribers base. Internet users in Morocco, Egypt, Oman and Jordan were found to enjoy wider bandwidth than those in UAE, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Syria. Syria is the most bandwidth deprived of the countries, while Egypt topped the rankings, according to Jawad Abbassi, Arab Advisors Group’s President.
The Arab Advisors Group research tied the intra-regional bandwidth variance to the different dynamics of competition and liberalization in the Arab countries. However, the overall low Internet bandwidth in all of the countries is a direct result of high costs, asserts Abbassi.
“Overall, Internet bandwidth costs in the region remain at much higher rates than those in the US or even Europe. Being small operators on the global scene, the ISPs/operators still lack any ‘peering’ arrangements with international backbone operators,” Abbassi explains.
“As such they continue to pay the complete cost of full-circuit connections to the International Internet backbone operators. Add to this, the existence of cross subsidization by monopoly operators and the cost becomes even higher” he added.
With liberalization and privatization steps gathering momentum across the region, the Arab Advisors Group predicts an easing of the situation as international bandwidth rates in these markets come down and ISPs expand their international bandwidth without extra costs. — (Mena Report)
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
