3G coverage in Jordan stands at 98% — World Bank report

AMMAN — Coverage of third generation (3G) mobile services in Jordan stands at 98 per cent, while 98 per cent of Jordanians have access to mobile phones at home, according to the World Bank's Digital Adoption Index (DAI).

The index, which was compiled for its recently released "World Development Report 2016: Digital Dividends", measures the depth and breadth of adoption of digital technologies in 171 countries. 

It indicated that 35 per cent of Jordanians have Internet access at home, while average download speed in the country is 3,862 kilobits per second (kbps).

The DAI is the composite of three sub-indices: business (based on the percentage of businesses with websites, the number of secure servers per million residents, download speed, and 3G coverage in the country), people (based on mobile access at home and Internet access at home), and government (based on core administrative systems, online public services, and digital identification).

Jordan scored 0.55 on the DAI on a scale of 0 to 1, with 1 being the maximum. It recorded its highest score on the people sub-index, at 0.68, followed by government at 0.60 and business at 0.37.

The Kingdom scored 0.52 for the availability of online public services.

Jordan was ranked ahead of several other Arab countries, such as Lebanon, which had a DAI score of 0.50, and Iraq, which scored 0.46.

While 94 per cent of homes in Lebanon have mobile phones and 57 per cent have Internet access, coverage of 3G services is lower than in Jordan at 61 per cent and download speed is 2,597kbps. In terms of availability of online public services, Lebanon scored 0.35. 

In Iraq, 3G coverage reached 89 per cent, while download speed is higher than in the Kingdom at 4,542kbps.

The report showed that the proportion of the population with Internet access at home in Iraq stands at 43 per cent, while the ratio with mobile access at home is 99 per cent. The availability of online public services in Iraq is 0.20.

The highest-ranking Arab country in the index was the UAE, which scored 0.77 overall, with 99 per cent of the population having mobile access at home and 87 per cent Internet access.

Download speed is 17,226kbps in the UAE, while 73 per cent of businesses have websites and 3G coverage is 99 per cent, according to the report, which showed that availability of online public services in the UAE scored 0.88.

Other Gulf Cooperation Council countries also performed strongly on the index, with Bahrain scoring 0.74, followed by Qatar at 0.69, Saudi Arabia at 0.66, Oman at 0.64, and Kuwait at 0.62. 

The report showed that 3G coverage in Egypt, which had an overall score of 0.55, stands at 99 per cent, while download speed is 2,553kbps. 

Twenty three per cent of Egyptians have Internet access at home, while 94 per cent have mobile access. In terms of availability of online public services, Egypt scored 0.59.