Telecommunication in Saudi Arabia
The development of telecommunications in Saudi Arabia is roughly equivalent to the average of the
European Union. Under the country code +966, there were a total of 46.68 million connections in 2019. Among them were 41.30 million million mobile phones, which corresponds to an average of 1.2 per person. In the EU, this figure is 1.2 mobile phones per person.
In the expansion of broadband Internet connections, Saudi Arabia is back. Around 96% of all residents have access to the Internet. Approximately 20% have their own fast Internet connection, which is at least faster than the previous ISDN (more than 2048 kbit/s).
With about 145,941 webhosts, Saudi Arabia is below the world's average by population.
Back to overview: Saudi ArabiaDevelopment of telephone and internet connections
With an average download speed of 78.14 Mbit/second for fixed-network broadband internet, Saudi Arabia ranked 49th in an international comparison. The upload rate of only 27.38 Mbit/second was significantly lower (66th place). The quality of the Internet, consisting of signal fluctuations (jitter) and latency, is very far ahead at 13th place.
In
mobile internet, i.e. on tablets and smartphones, Saudi Arabia comes 8th with a download speed of 99.34 Mbit/second. The upload speed of around 20 Mbit was enough for 10th place.
The "Speedtest Global Index" published regularly by Ookla is based on several million individual measurements in November 2020 from 176 countries.
The following diagrams show the development of the various telephone and Internet connections as a percentage of the country's population. Values above 100% mean that, on average, every inhabitant has more than one connection.
Access to the Internet in Saudi Arabia from 1990 - 2019
Broadband internet in Saudi Arabia 2001 - 2019
Landlines 1990 - 2019
Mobile phones 1990 - 2019