Arab States Telecommunication Indicators

Prepared for the Arab States Regional Telecommunication Development Conference, the report covers telecommunications in the Arab-speaking World. The overview examines fixed-line developments, international telephone traffic trends, mobile cellular growth and the Internet. It also compares performance, looks at investment requirements and offers suggestions for the region’s operators to deal with the rapidly changing telecommunication sector.

Direction of Traffic: Trends in international telephone tariffs

International communications helps to make the world a smaller place. But our new communication-based geography has its own logic. Global investment programmes and the tariffs of foreign countries are often more important in determining who is getting closer to whom than domestic proximity or domestic call prices. For instance, in 1996 it was cheaper to call from Geneva to Honolulu than it was to call Barcelona. Similarly, for technical and economic reasons, the majority of telephone traffic between African countries is routed through third countries outside the continent and most Internet traffic between Asian cities passes via the United
States. The second edition of Direction of Traffic provides a detailed review of these and other factors re-directing international telecommunication traffic.