Djibouti hosts about 10–12 international undersea cables on the Red Sea coast, including SMW3, EIG, SEA-ME-WE-5/6, AAE-1, EASSy, WIOCC, Yemeni, and DARE1, linking to Europe, Asia and East/Southern Africa. Djibouti Telecom invested over $200 million in the last decade in landing stations and a protected submarine corridor, reinforcing Djibouti as a regional internet gateway. Terrestrial…
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As of mid-2025, Starlink is available in over 110 countries and territories. In the United States, Starlink began with limited trials in August 2020 and the public beta “Better Than Nothing Beta” in November 2020, and now has nationwide commercial coverage including Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, with over 2.5 million subscribers as…
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Iridium operates 66 active LEO satellites in a cross-linked constellation, providing truly global coverage including the poles. Inmarsat uses 3–4 GEO satellites at about 36,000 km altitude to cover most of the globe from roughly 70°N to 70°S, and its IsatPhone 2 offers 8 hours of talk time. Globalstar runs about 48 LEO satellites to…
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As of early 2024, about 2.09 million Batswana were internet users, representing roughly 77.3% of the population. Cellular penetration is around 185%, with mobile internet subscriptions at 2.93 million and fixed-line subscriptions at 164,000. Orange Botswana launched Africa’s first 5G network in 2022, initially covering about 30% of the population. SpaceX’s Starlink entered Botswana in…
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Starlink is available in over 100 countries as of mid-2025, spanning North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania, and parts of South America. As of late 2024, Starlink had surpassed 4 million subscribers. Starlink offers five service types: Residential, Roam, Business (Priority), Maritime, and Aviation. Typical speeds range from about 50 Mbps to 150+ Mbps, with…
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As of mid-2024, the UAE’s telecom market is effectively a duopoly dominated by Etisalat (e& UAE) with about 12.9 million mobile subscribers (~61% share) and by du with about 8.2 million subscribers (~39% share; both majority government-owned). Abu Dhabi became the first capital city globally to be fully connected by fiber optics in 2011, and…
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Saudi Telecom Company (stc) accounted for about 67% of Saudi Arabia’s telecom market by revenue in Q3 2022, and held roughly 50–55% of mobile subscribers, with Mobily at 20–25% and Zain at 10–15%. The Saudi Open Access agreement in 2020 allows all six major network operators—stc, Mobily, Zain, Salam, Dawiyat, and GO Telecom—to share towers…
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Sudan’s internet backbone is centered at Port Sudan and links land via the East Africa Submarine System (EASSy) and FLAG/FALCON, with terrestrial fiber reaching Egypt and Ethiopia. Sudatel (Sudani) is over 60% state-owned and operates the national backbone along with fixed-line, mobile, and internet services under the Sudani brand. Zain Sudan, a subsidiary of Kuwait’s…
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The Ministry of Communications (MoC) controls the national fiber backbone and international gateways and leases bandwidth to private ISPs at wholesale prices around $50 per 1 Mbps. As of 2021, Iraq had about 2.1 million fixed-line/FTTH subscribers, with most of the deployment concentrated in Baghdad. Iraq has over 40 million mobile subscriptions, with 4G LTE…
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Mobile subscriptions grew from zero in 2001 to nearly 100% penetration by 2021. A nationwide fiber-optic backbone was being rolled out, including a 400 km cross-border fiber link to China via the Wakhan Corridor that was near completion in 2021. The Taliban’s return to power in August 2021 stalled or halted many fiber and broader…
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