Dubai, June 06: Indians dominated incoming phone calls to the Gulf in 2010 while it was among three countries that accounted for more than half the outgoing international calls in 2010, official figures showed on Monday.
The figures by the UAE’s Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA), which oversees the telecom sector in the second largest Arab economy, showed mobile phone users spent 21.6 billion minutes on calls and 3.2 billion minutes on mobile phone text messages (SMS) in 2010.
This means an average daily talk of around 59 million minutes and nearly 2.4 million minutes per hour, the figures showed.
Calls by fixed lines totalled around 4.3 billion minutes while overall revenue from mobile phones, fixed lines and internet stood at nearly Dh24.3 billion, showed the figures, published in the Dubai-based Arabic language daily Emirat Alyoum.
The report showed outgoing mobile phone calls grew by around six per cent in 2010 while international calls rose by 11 per cent to 4.2 billion minutes.
India, Pakistan and Egypt topped the outgoing calls, accounting for 53 per cent last year, the report showed.
“India dominated incoming calls to the UAE, accounting for nearly 31 per cent of the total incoming calls,” it said.
In 2010, the telecom sector contributed by around 5.3 per cent of the UAE’s GDP compared with 4.9 per cent in 2009.
Etisalat remained the dominant telecom operator, with its mobile phone revenue totaling about Dh18.4 billion in 2010 compared with Dh17.7 billion in 2009. Revenue from fixed lines stood at Dh3.2 billion and from internet at Dh2.7 billion.
–Agencies