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Ict In Mena

ICT in Middle East and North Africa MENA DEFINITION Let’s have a look before the report what MENA region means The countries of the MENA region have been grouped into three sub regions. Gulf Region & Arabian Peninsula Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Yemen, Iraq and Iran: this sub-region includes all the six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) plus three of their neighbours. North Africa Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and Sudan: this grouping covers four of the five Maghreb countries plus Egypt and Sudan. Near East Turkey, Jordan, Israel, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine: this sub-region includes four countries that border the Eastern Mediterranean, plus two neighbours. This area, excluding Turkey, is also known as the Levant. Overview: Traditionally, the Middle East countries have been known for their wide dependencies on oil-based resources. But now, with world heavily betting on renewable energy resources, the region has started to reduce its dependency on oil and has started to look towards other industries to sustain. And ICT is one of the industries the Middle East has chosen to bank upon for its future growth. There has been growing demand for ICT products and services among residential and corporate segment. Penetration in mobile market has already surpassed 100% in some of the countries. According to the report, the UAE, followed by Qatar and Bahrain, enjoys the most developed mobile network infrastructure among the Middle East countries with mobile penetration rate exceeding 145% in 2007. It also identifies the country that currently enjoys highest Internet and broadband penetration rate in the region. According to the International Monetary Fund's World Economic Outlook Database of April 2008, the three largest Middle Eastern economies in 2007 were Turkey ($ 663,419,000,000), Saudi Arabia ($ 376,029,000,000) and Iran ($ 294,089,000,000) in terms of Nominal GDP)[32]; and Turkey ($ 887,964,000,000), Iran...