Solid Internet growth pillars insure Kuwait's leading ranking among the Arab countries.

A newly released report from the Arab Advisors Group (www.arabadvisors.com) fully analyzes the Kuwaiti Internet and datacomm, content and E-commerce markets. Kuwait's Internet accounts penetration rate will grow from 7.59% in 2001 to 16.5% in 2006, insuring it an enviable position amongst Arab countries. 9% of accounts will be broadband enabled by 2006, up from only 1% in 2001.

May 02, 2002 -

The Kuwaiti Internet access market is somewhat liberalized. Currently, there is one operational main ISP in Kuwait (Qualitynet), while the newly established Fasttelco is expected to launch its services in May 2002. In addition, there are around some 15 smaller service providers (sub ISPs, like Globalnet Center, Gulfweb, DanaNet, Alphanet, and others), which provide Internet services to individual subscribers and end users and rely on the main ISPs for their connectivity.

A new report, entitled Kuwait Internet and Datacomm Landscape Report 2002, was released to the Arab Advisors Group's (www.arabadvisors.com) Strategic Research Service subscribers in May 2002. The 33-pages report is the culmination of painstaking primary research over more than two months by Arab Advisors Group's analysts.

"Internet access rates in Kuwait are quite high by regional standards, when compared with those in Jordan and Lebanon, for example." Sami Sunna', Arab Advisors Group analyst wrote in the report. "The Arab Advisors Group believes that once Internet dialup rates drop below the average current charge of KD 20 (US$ 65) per month for unlimited dialup, the number of Internet subscribers will significantly grow in Kuwait.." He added.

Moreover, The Kuwaiti Ministry of Communications' anticipated introduction of tariff rebalancing for fixed line services (i.e. lowering international call rates and charging for local and national call rates) will also provide heavy Internet users with an incentive to switch from their dialup accounts to the broadband always-on ADSL service. "As dialup costs will increase, broadband will carry not just better speeds but lower costs for heavy dialup users", Mr. Sunna' explained. "We therefore, project broadband DSL accounts to make up 9% of total Internet accounts by 2006, up from a little more than 1% in 2001".

The report featured and analysed ISPs, Datacomm providers, content providers and E-commerce companies in Kuwait. The report found that while the Internet access market is in good shape in Kuwait, "E-commerce is still under-developed and many consumers still prefer the traditional way of shopping. E-commerce in Kuwait has not made any significant progress over the past years, and traditional patterns of retailing, wholesaling and government services still persist." On the Internet access side, the projected 395,000 Internet accounts in Kuwait in 2006 are expected to generate more than US$ 197 million in revenues that year.

The Kuwait Internet and Datacomm Landscape Report 2002 includes 5-year historical figures on 40 plus indicators of the communications market as well as 5-year projections (till 2006). The report's table of content can be downloaded in PDF format from Arab Advisors Group's web page (www.arabadvisors.com). The report analyses the operations of all the companies in the market and presents detailed profiles of their operations and strategy.