MUSCAT – As per the data issued by the National Center for Statistics and Information (NCSI), postpaid mobile phone subscriptions increased by 24.1 percent by the end of March 2023, reaching 1,697,152, compared to the same period last year. The number of prepaid mobile phone subscriptions also increased by 8.1 percent to reach 5,145,722.

The number of active mobile broadband Internet subscriptions increased by 8 percent, and the total fixed internet service subscriptions recorded an increase of 14.3 percent to reach 541,060 subscriptions, by the end of March 2023, compared to the same period in 2022. The number of fixed broadband subscriptions (more than 256 kilobytes/sec) reached 539,334 by the end of March 2023 – an increase of 4.3% compared to March 2022, while the number of low-speed internet subscriptions decreased (less than 256 kilobytes/sec); leased Internet lines increased by 15.3 percent, to reach 1,726 subscriptions. The statistics indicated that the total number of fixed line subscriptions decreased by 1 percent by the end of March 2023, to reach 562,419 subscriptions, compared to the end of March 2022.

With regard to analogue fixed-line telephone subscriptions, which includes prepaid and postpaid, the number decreased by 13.8 percent by the end of March 2023 to reach 232,587, compared to the same period last year. The number of fixed-line telephone subscriptions connected to Internet Protocol (IP) technology reached 272,386 during the same period, registering an increase of 12.8 percent compared to the end of March 2022. In terms of the number of analog fixed telephone lines, Muscat came first with a rate of 63.49 percent at the end of March 2023, followed by North Al Batinah with a rate of 10.8 percent; Dhofar recorded 8.13 percent, and the rest of the goverorates registered 17.58 percent. The statistics showed that the number of digital network channel line subscriptions for integrated services increased by 1.7 percent by the end of March 2023, reaching 49,860 subscriptions compared to the same period last year, while the number of fixed wireless subscriptions decreased by 31.9 percent by the end of March 2023, to reach 785 subscriptions, while the number of public telephones remained at 6,801.