Postpaid mobile phone subscriptions increased by 33.9 per cent by the end of December 2024 compared to the same period last year, reaching 2,391,951 subscriptions.

Statistics issued by the National Center for Statistics and Information (NCSI) showed a decrease in the number of prepaid mobile phone subscriptions by 1.6 per cent to reach 5,114,919 subscriptions.

Among these subscriptions, 3,889, 244 from operators and 1,225,675 from resale, which represented an increase in the total number of mobile phone subscriptions by 7.5 per cent by the end of December 2024 compared to the end of December 2023, as the total number of mobile phone subscriptions (postpaid and prepaid reached) 7,506,870.

The number of active mobile broadband internet subscriptions recorded 6,455,261 subscriptions by the end of December 2024. Subscriptions to the fixed internet service also recorded an increase of 2 per cent by the end of December 2024 to reach 574,730 subscriptions, compared to the same period in 2023.

The total number of fixed broadband subscriptions (more than 256 kilobytes/second) reached 573,028 by the end of December 2024, an increase of 2 per cent compared to December 2023, while the number of subscriptions via low-speed Internet (less than 256 kilobytes/second), which includes telephone calls and some leased internet lines, reached 1,702.

Statistics indicated a decrease in the number of fixed-line subscriptions by the end of December 2024 by 24.8 per cent to reach 435,596 compared to the end of December 2023.

As for analogue fixed-line subscriptions, which include prepaid and postpaid, their number recorded a decrease of 20.9 per cent by the end of December 2024 to reach 66,834 subscriptions compared to the same period of the previous year.

The number of fixed-line subscriptions connected to Internet Protocol (IP) technology reached 318,478 during the same period, recording an increase of 7.4 per cent compared to the end of December 2023.

Statistics showed that the number of subscriptions to the digital network channels for integrated services recorded a 0.2 decrease by the end of December 2024 to reach 49,634, while the number of public telephones reached 127, a decrease of 98.1 per cent, and the number of fixed wireless subscriptions decreased by 25.6 per cent to reach 523.

The Governorate of Muscat came first in the number of fixed analogue telephone lines with a percentage of 49.63 per cent at the end of December 2024, followed by the Governorate of North Al Batinah with a percentage of 11.46 per cent, while the Governorate of Dhofar recorded a percentage of 10.03 per cent. The percentage of lines in the remaining governorates reached 28.88 per cent.