Riyadh - eMedia:
Communications & IT Commission revealed an increase in Internet penetration at a high rate over the past years, rising from 5 per cent in 2001 to about 40 per cent at the end of the first half of this year, while the number of users in the Kingdom is currently about 11 million users, indicating that the reasons for this growth is attributable to increased awareness of the benefits of the Internet, and the growth of broadband services, as well as the decline in the prices of each computers and services of communications and Internet.
This came in the fourth issue of the Newsletter of the Commission which was issued yesterday, the Newsletter added that the number of subscribers to broadband services has grown from less than 35 thousand in 2005 to more than 3.2 million subscribers by the end of the first half of this year, with an average cumulative annual growth over of 180 per cent annually over the past four years, which considered the much improved rapidly in the availability of broadband connections.
The Newsletter pointed out that the number of Saudi domain names registered by the Saudi Center for network information has increased steadily, with a total number of domain names registered more than 19000 until the end of the first half of this year.