ICT in Qatar

The country

A peninsula on the western coast of the Arabian Gulf, Qatar is home to about 813 000 people.* Despite its small size, it is a high-income economy with a well-developed communications infrastructure.

Almost half the country’s population live in Qatar’s capital and commercial centre, Doha. In 2003, the per capita gross domestic product (GDP) was USD 28 920 — seventeenth in world rankings and higher than several members of the “G8” group of industrialized countries. Petroleum and natural gas form the basis of Qatar’s economy, and at the end of 2004, they accounted for almost 80 per cent of its total exports.

ICT infrastructure

Growth in ICT in Qatar

Source: ITU World Telecommunication Indicators Database.

The expansion of information and communication technologies (ICT) in Qatar has taken the country to a leading place in this field among its neighbours in the region. It comes fourth in ICT penetration rates among the Arab States, behind Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. The incumbent telecommunication operator, Qatar Telecom (Q-Tel), was partially privatized in 1998, and the Supreme Council for Communication and Information Technology (also known as ictQATAR) was created in 2004 with the mandate of regulator and enabler of the country’s ICT sector.

Qatar has seen particularly strong growth in the number of mobile phone subscribers, which overtook the number of fixed telephone lines in 2001 (see chart). The number of subscribers to mobile telephony services rose by an average of 42 per cent per year between 1999 and 2004 — a considerably higher rate than in most other countries in the region, or the world as a whole. By the end of 2004, some 66 per cent of Qatar’s population were subscribers to mobile phone services. In contrast, the number of fixed telephone lines has hardly changed over the last ten years. As in other countries, it seems that people in Qatar are going straight to mobile telephony.

Internet and broadband services are growing. Today, 22 per cent of Qatar’s population use the internet. By the end of 2004, Qatar had 10 652 broadband subscribers. This was 6.5 per cent of internet users, and 1.4 per cent of the country’s population as a whole. Promoting broadband is one of the top priorities of ictQATAR, which plans to establish and manage a “Broadband For All Access Fund.” The years to come are likely to see more broadband services in Qatar, built upon what is already a solid foundation of ICT infrastructure and new initiatives.