| Azlan Othman |
BRUNEI Darussalam has a mobile phone penetration of 125.5 per cent last year, up by 14.1 per cent from 2015.
Prepaid users took a major share with 426,854 subscribers compared to 96,599 subscribers for postpaid users, statistics from Authority for Info-communications Technology Industry of Brunei Darussalam (AITI) revealed. The statistics also showed an increase of 68,631 subscribers for prepaid and 18,438 for postpaid from 2015.
In the first quarter of this year alone (Q1 2017), there were about 125 per cent mobile phone penetration with 425,293 prepaid subscribers and 96,405 postpaid subscribers.
Meanwhile, for mobile broadband penetration (handset) per 100 inhabitants, it has also shown an increase – which was 115.7 per cent mobile subscribers in 2016, compared to 93.1 per cent mobile subscribers in 2015.
In the first quarter of 2017, the penetration has already reached 118.7 per cent. As for the fixed broadband penetration (household and per 100 inhabitants), it has reached 51.1 per cent in 2016 compared to 47.8 per cent in 2015. And in the first quarter of this year, it has reached 52.7 per cent.
On another note, according to last year’s household ICT survey report, the top three most popular social media applications used in the Sultanate were Facebook with 92 per cent, Instagram (87 per cent) and Twitter (49 per cent). The top three most popular messaging applications used are WhatsApp with 97 per cent, Skype (46 per cent) and Telegram (35 per cent).
Social media and messaging applications are most commonly used in this country to keep in touch with family and friends (84 per cent), sharing information and opinions (65 per cent), and sharing photos (64 per cent).
The rest were sharing videos/music (53 per cent), online shopping (52 per cent), online gaming (40 per cent), making new friends (37 per cent), business related activities (25 per cent), and marketing of products and services (17 per cent).
The household ICT survey report said consistent with global trends in social media use, the most active social media users are aged between 15 years old and 34 years old with most engaging on multiple platforms.
In the meantime, this year’s new ‘Digital in 2017 Global Overview’ report from ‘We Are Social and Hootsuite’ released in January, it was reported that Brunei Darussalam has the third highest social media penetration in the world with 370,000 users, or 86 per cent of the total population.
Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) topped the chart with 99 per cent social media use, said the report which also highlighted that more than half of the world’s population now use the Internet.
Brunei Darussalam also fared very high in terms of penetration of mobile social media with 76 per cent using it, and is the sixth highest globally after Qatar, the UAE, South Korea, Aruba and Maldives.
In total, 10 countries have mobile social media penetration rates in excess of 70 per cent, but 43 countries have penetration rates of less than 10 per cent, the majority of which are in Africa.
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