Increasing Broadband Internet Penetration
In the OIC Member Countries
71
IV. CURRENT SITUATION OF BROADBAND PENETRATION IN THE
OIC MEMBER COUNTRIES
Having analyzed worldwide broadband trends, the report will now turn to analyzing the
current situation of broadband in the OIC Member Countries. This analysis will address
relevant topics in the supply and demand areas with the purpose of defining policy and
regulatory recommendations.
IV.1. Broadband Supply in the OIC Member Countries
Availability of fixed and mobile broadband infrastructureThe statistics on fixed broadband coverage among the OIC Member Countries are not available
in an up-to-date international database. However, the responses to a survey submitted to
country regulators and case study interviews conducted in the context of this study, yield the
following coverage metrics (see table 21).
Table 21: Selected OIC Member Countries: Fixed broadband coverage (percent of
population) (2016)
Country Fixed Broadband Coverage (%) Turkey 98
Jordan 85
Saudi Arabia 80
Kazakhstan 70
Suriname 60
Cote d’Ivoire 20
Benin 5
Source: Study survey and interviewsWhile difficult to draw any conclusion for this limited data set, it would appear that fixed
broadband coverage has reached a high level in Asian OIC Member Countries, while African
states still exhibit low coverage of the population.
This situation differs significantly from coverage of mobile broadband. In this case, mobile
broadband operators in African OIC Member Countries could serve at the end of 2015 58% of
the population. That being said, the OIC Arab states mobile broadband operators were already
covering 74% of the population. Of note, despite their impressive growth in mobile broadband
coverage, OIC Member Countries still lag OECD countries by 33 % points (see table 22).
Table 22: O t i s: mobile broadba d coverage (3G) (percent of population)
(2015) (%)
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 OECD 5.93 45.02 64.40 79.52 82.82 91.63 93.20 95.24 97.78
Asian OIC 0.61 1.23 3.40 4.89 6.85 13.29 22.31 43.17 62.69
Arab OIC 0.08 6.94 24.50 41.55 51.86 55.17 58.06 65.85 74.30
African OIC 0.00 0.00 2.18 5.59 7.00 10.28 17.92 32.43 57.71
Total OIC 0.35 2.24 7.87 13.47 16.55 21.75 29.14 45.82 64.16
Source: Regulatory Agencies; International Telecommunications Union; Telecom Advisory Services analysis