Muscat: Internet subscriptions in Oman have shot up by more than 65,000 connections, according to data from the National Centre for Statistics and Information.
The latest monthly statistical bulletin from the NCSI reveals that as of September 2017, residents in Oman had signed up for a total of 335,126 subscriptions, up from 269,549 last December, representing a 24% increase in this time period.
A vast majority of these connections were fixed broadband setups (332,646), with the remaining being fixed narrowband lines.
In addition, the number of active mobile broadband subscribers have shot up by 13% since last December, with 4,448,886 mobile internet subscriptions now active, having jumped up from 3,937,861 at the end of 2016.
There are a total of 7,112,605 mobile subscriptions in Oman, an increase of 3.6% since last December, when the number stood at 6,866,260. The vast majority of these are pre-paid mobile plans (6,470,397), with the other 642,208 being post-paid customers.
There also exist about 483,854 fixed line connections, a 14.5% increase on the 422,518 that were present last December.
Muscat has the largest number of fixed lines, with 52% of all LAN phone connections in Oman present in this governorate. A further 13.7% are in Al Batinah, with a further 7.4 apiece in Al Dakhiliyah and Al Shariqiyah.
Another 11.2% of fixed line connections are in the Dhofar region, with Musandam (1.5%), Buraimi (3.2%), Al Dhahirah (3.2%) and Al Wusta (0.2%) accounting for the rest.