214% Increase in the Percentage of Subscribers to Broadband Services

A report issued by Akamai indicated that the percentage of users subscribed to broadband services at speeds of 4 Mbps increased during 2016 by 214% compared to 2015, and that average internet speeds in the Kingdom also increased by 56% during 2016 compared to the previous year, 2015. The report also indicated that internet speed in the Kingdom reached 4.9 Mbps, a speed that approaches the global average of 6.3 Mbps, as stated in the report.

It is worth noting that the broadband initiatives currently being worked on by the Kingdom, as one of the key projects within the National Transformation Plan 2020, will work to significantly improve internet speeds in the coming period, by increasing the coverage rate of fiber optics at speeds of 100-1,000 Mbps for homes in high-density urban areas to 80%, and to 55% in other urban areas, and increasing the coverage rate of wireless broadband networks at speeds of no less than 10 Mbps to a rate of 70% of dwellings in remote areas by the end of 2020.

It should be noted that the Commission recently floated the first high-speed wireless broadband projects for remote centers, villages, and hamlets, which come within the expansion plan for the rollout of broadband services in remote areas, one of the initiatives of the National Transformation Program 2020 for the communications and information technology sector, which has come into effect in fulfillment of the Kingdom's Vision 2030, and which includes providing high-speed broadband services to various regions of the Kingdom by stimulating investment in infrastructure.