The Internet landscape in the Gulf region has grown tremendously in time. The latest report by RIPE NCC highlights the market development, infrastructure, and Internet routing within Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Yemen.
The report indicates that Iraq, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Kuwait have shown significant growth over the past decade in establishing local networks. In line with this, Iraq outperformed GCC countries in terms of having the most Local Internet Registries (LIRs). On the other hand, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, and Yemen have experienced far less growth in this area, with some even decreasing their number of LIRs.
As more organizations strive to get access to internet networks, demand for IPv4 in the Gulf region increased with Saudi Arabia and UAE acquiring more IPv4 addresses from the secondary market. Despite the decreasing availability of IPv4’s and its increasing cost on the secondary market, many countries in the Gulf region continue to struggle with IPv6 deployment. Although Iraq, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Kuwait have substantially increased their IPv6 holdings in recent years, there are vast differences when it comes to actual deployment rates. Among all the countries probed in the RIPE NCC report, the UAE leads the region in IPv6 deployment followed by Saudi Arabia.
Moreover, there has been an increase in the number of Internet exchange points (IXPs) in the Gulf region. Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and UAE each have at least one operational IXP. In detail, providers in the Gulf region prefer International IXPs, with traffic being sent across distant locations rather than making use of regional IXPs.
Furthermore, given the Gulf region’s high reliance on mobile access, mobile Internet connectivity certainly had a faster growth and penetration rate than fixed broadband. As a matter of fact, the region has some of the highest mobile subscriptions per capita in the world in many of the Gulf countries.
The countries included in this report vary greatly yet, they all focus on digital transformation, including smart cities, e-government, and e-health services. All have their national ICT strategies in place that aim to position them as regional or world leaders on infrastructure initiatives, ICT skills, and cloud access.