Nearly 639,000 new GSM users joined the UAE mobile phone network in the first quarter of 2012, raising the total number to 12.36 million and widening the penetration ratio to 154 per cent, official data showed on Thursday.

The number of new entrants accounted for nearly 87 per cent of the total new subscribers in the mobile, landline and internet networks in the second largest Arab economy, showed the figures by the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA), which oversees the telecom sector in the country.

The figures showed the new mobile phone users in the first quarter hit a record high in such a period as the number exceeded the total number of new users in the first and second quarters of 2011 by nearly 110,000.

At the end of March 2012, the total number of mobile phone subscribers in the UAE stood at 12.367 million, nearly 1.3 million over the number at the end of March last year, according to the report, published in Alkhaleej newspaper.

It showed around 730,000 new users joined the UAE’s telecom sector in the first quarter of 2012, raising the total number of mobile phone, fixed landline and broadband subscribers to 15.1 million, almost double the country’s population.