MUSCAT: Nearly 22 percent of Omani families are living in rural areas, according to a study by the National Center for Statistics and Information (NCSI).

According to the NCSI reported titled “Towards Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals 2030”, 96.9% of village residents have access to paved streets within 5 kilometers or less, and 97.4% of the same category can reach paved streets in 14 minutes, according to the latest data from the Household Expenditure and Income Survey 2019.

In terms of the global cellular mobile networks worldwide, they expanded very rapidly and helped to overcome some infrastructure barriers. The networks were often limited to urban and populated areas. Data shows that the total mobile phone subscriptions in the Sultanate was 6.4 million in 2019. Population coverage by 3G internet services through cellular networks hit (99.26%). The population coverage by the band of (LTE/WiMAX) technologies reached about (96.25%) in 2019.

The report takes insights from 2015-2020 data and surveys from ministries, government departments, the 2020 general census data and specialized surveys, such as the Comprehensive Household Survey.