(AFP Photo)
By Mohamed Alaa El Din
The number of mobile users declined slightly last January, to record 95.2 million users compared to 95.3 million users last December, according to a report from the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.
This caused the rate of mobile service usage in comparison to the population retreat to 110.6% compared to 110.9% in December 2014, the report said.
These numbers coincide with the toughening of subscription procedures for mobile and data lines, and the revision of all data for current lines by the National Telecommunication Regulatory Authority (NTRA), leading to the halting of many mobile lines. The number of active mobile lines declined to 95.2m lines last January, compared to 100.3m lines in January 2014.
On the other hand, the number of Internet users continued to increase during January 2015, to reach 49.27 million users against 48.3 million users during December 2014, constituting a 1.9% growth rate.
According to the Ministry of Communications’ report, mobile phones continue to dominate the largest share of Internet users, as the number of Internet users through mobile phones reached 33.4 million users in January 2015, against 31.7 million users during December 2014.
The number of Internet users through USB devices exceeded 4.1 million users to acquire second place among the means of access to the Internet, while the number of internet users through ADSL continued its slight growth to reach 3.08 million users by the end of January 2015.
