‘Net’ gain for 95% homes in Kingdom

Ninety-five percent of homes in Saudi Arabia are connected to the Internet, following Singapore (98.8 percent) and Qatar (96 percent).
This has been revealed by a report of the United Nations Broadband Commission.
Iceland retained the highest percentage of Internet users at 98.2 percent, followed by Luxembourg (97.3 percent) and Norway and Denmark (97 percent.)
The report indicated that China is the largest Internet market in the world with 721 million users, followed by India, which beat the United States for second place, with 333 million users.
Globally, it is estimated that 3.9 billion people do not use the Internet, and China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria contain 66 percent of the world population connected to the Internet.
The report added that 20 countries, including the United States, represent three quarters of Internet users on the planet, and the results indicate that targeted efforts in a few key markets can greatly help to reduce the digital divide between the digital haves and have-nots.
The report on the state of broadband in 2016, which was issued ahead of the fourteenth meeting of the UN committee in New York on Sept. 18, is looking forward with optimism to the potentials of broadband with the deployment of the high-speed mobile networks’ fourth-generation, “4G.”
Monaco took first place in terms of the spread of fixed broadband services exceeding the rate of 47 subscriptions per 100 people, compared to Switzerland’s 45 percent.
The report also noted the prevalence of fixed broadband services to 40 percent in seven countries which include Monaco, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, and South Korea.
Before that, there were only six countries whose prevailing fixed-broadband services exceeded the rate of 47 subscriptions per 100 people in 2014, and only one state, Switzerland, in 2012.
Finland experienced the highest percentage of active subscriptions to mobile broadband services around the world, where the number of subscription reached 144 per 100 people, followed by Singapore (142 subscriptions) and Kuwait (139 subscriptions).
The Asia-Pacific region represents about half of the total number of active subscriptions for mobile broadband at 48 percent.