Qatar`s ICT adoption second in the Arab world
31/12/20
Qatar has one of the world`s highest internet adoption rates and ranks among top countries in terms of acceptance of information and communications technologies (ICT). The government has invested substantially in 5G technology and Ooredoo was the first in the world to launch the commercially-available 5G services.
According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report Special Edition 2020, the State of Qatar ranked second in the Arab world and ninth globally (in terms of ICT adoption). Qatar’s score is 83.9 out of 100 with South Korea at the top of the list with a score of 93.7.
The criteria include telephone subscriptions, internet users as a percent of adult population and fibre internet subscribers as well as mobile subscriptions, broadband subscriptions and broadband internet subscriptions and others.
The country`s improved ICT infrastructure has led to internet speeds of up to 10 Gbps during peak hours and the 5G network has the capacity to allow more than 10,000 times the volume of traffic compared to LTE.
The adoption of new technology by citizens and residents in the country is high and digitalization has advanced at a rapid rate over the last years. It is driven by the high awareness amongst citizens and residents as well as the initiatives of the government. An example is the increasing number of eGovernment systems for citizens and residents.
Earlier this year, the Planning & Statistics Authority (PSA) released a report which identified the annual growth rate for computer and internet users at 9.9 percent and 10.7 percent between 2009 and 2018 respectively. According to the report, 2.2 million people used a computer in 2018 compared to 846 thousand people in 2009. The percentage of computer users reached 82.7 percent of the population and this number is likely to increase in the future.
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