Dubai: The UAE is the most connected country in the Arab world, according to a latest report by the Arab Advisors Group.

Click here to see the 'total country connectivity measure' (pdf)

The annual results of Arab Advisors Group's Total Country Connectivity Measure (TCCM) reveal substantial - mostly cellular service driven - improvements in overall scores.

"On a more sombre note, Arab broadband internet markets remain far less developed than OECD markets," the report says.

The Arab Advisors Group, a member of the Arab Jordan Investment Bank Group, calculates the TCCM by adding the household mainlines penetration, cellular penetration, and Internet users penetration rates in each country.

The UAE, with a score of 261.4 per cent in TCCM, leads the table of 21 Arab countries followed by Qatar with 255.6 per cent, while Mauritania and Sudan with 41 per cent and 21.7 per cent respectively stand at the bottom of the table.

"Convergence presents us with a great opportunity that the media and telecom business can greatly benefit from, as new sources of revenue are emerging," Basem Rousan, the Jordanian Minister of Information and Communications Technology, said in a statement. Jordan, with four mobile operators, is the most liberalised market in the Arab world.

Mobile market

According to Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), the number of cellphone subscribers in the Gulf reached 35 million and 125 million in the Middle East North Africa region. "Although the Gulf's telecom market is still growing, we expect consolidation to start taking place in the next two to three years," said Gassan Hasbani of BAH.

The main driver in the rising TCCM scores in the Arab world was cellular subscribers growth, with internet services contributing a much lower portion of the increase.

"The Arab world still lags behind developed countries in the penetration and use of broadband internet - and internet access at large," Jawad Jalal Abbassi, Arab Advisors Group's founder and general manager.