Riyadh, eMedia: 
The domain names registered at Saudi Network Information Center increased lately with a 20% ratio at last February. The total names registered reached this year 18085 while those registered last year reached 3517.
A report issued by Communication and Information Technology Commission indicates that communication and information technology sector has been ascendingly growing with the end of the year 2009. Accordingly, mobile communication participations reached 44.8 million resulting in an increase of deployment percentage to be 175% with a growth ratio of 8% compared to that of the third quarter of the same year, and 25% compared to last year 2008. The prepaid slices users represent 86% of the total users of mobile communication.
The report stated that operating land lines reached 4.171 million at the end of the year 2009, and that 3 million of them represent home participations with a percentage of 72% of the total lines which indicates that land lines deployment percentage reached 67% compared to number of residences. Additionally, internet users in the kingdom that were only 1 million at 2001 increased to be 9.8 million at the end of 2009 with a yearly growth ratio of 33%, while deployment of internet is estimated to be 38.3% of Saudi citizens.