Two mobiles for everyone in UAE

Every person in the UAE has an average of two mobile phones, allowing the country to have one of the world’s highest GSM penetration rates.

At end-March, the UAE had 16.93 million mobile phone subscribers, the highest number of GSM users since the country introduced such services in early 1980s.

With an estimated population of around 8.2 million, the mobile phone penetration rate exceeded 200 per cent for the first time in the UAE’s history, or an average two mobile phone services for every citizen.

The rate at end-March was sharply higher than that of a year ago, when it stood at round 170 per cent, according to official figures.

The figures by the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA), which manages the country’s telecom sector, showed nearly 867,000 new GSM subscribers entered the market in the first quarter of 2014.

More than 80 per cent of the new users involved pre-paid services, which stood at around 732,000 subscribers to etisalat and du, the figures showed.

The UAE is the second largest Arab economy after Saudi Arabia and is the second wealthiest after Qatar by GDP per capita.
 

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