The following are some useful statistics that were gatheredfrom various sources, and addressing mainly the Middle EastArabic Speaking countries. Some comparison is provided forNorth American and Europe as well.

World Most Wired Nations

Cyber cafes have seen explosive growth in Saudi Arabia over the last year.

It is practically impossible to list all the cafes operating in the Kingdom, but at least the few of them listed below should give the traveller or the occasional user what they need.

Update: The per-minute access charges are now reduced to 3 SR per hour. That is a 33% reduction over the previous rate. Update: On May 14, Reuters reported (according to this ZDNet article) that prices will be reduced, perhaps by June 2000! Some providers have already cut the prices down (e.g. TriNet has cut its unlimited monthly subscription from 420 SR to 200 SR.

So, you live in Saudi Arabia, and all your friends and colleagues at the office have Internet access, except you, that is...You want to get an internet account, but puzzled on what is available in the market... Or perhaps you are a young Saudi studying abroad, and get internet access at your university. Your study is coming to an end, and you are moving back to the kingdom, and wonder what internet access is available these days... Or maybe your company is moving you to Saudi Arabia, and you don't know what internet access options are there in that country...

Note: If you are looking for a comparison of various ISPs from aperformance point of view, or from end user feedback, then please checkour Service Watch section for details.

This site contains some useful statistics that were gathered from various sources, and addressing the Middle East Arabic Speaking countries.

Some comparison is provided for North American and Europe as well.

Note: For the year ending 13 March 2000, Internet users in the Arab World has doubled over the last year! It is forecasted that by the end of 2002, they will number 12 million. Read all about it in the Estimated Installed Base of Internet Users.

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If you compare the cost of accessing the internet in the Arab region, versus what it costs in USA and Canada, you will find it much less favorable.

In the United States, a regular unlimited access monthly account would cost around 20 US$. Moreover, there are absolutely no charges per minute from the local phone company.

Update - March 2000 It seems that Alexandria, Egypt has now surpassed Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in the internet speed! During Eid/Hajj holidays, my surfing experience in Alexandria, Egypt was significantly better than the daily suffering in Jeddah. How long is a string? How high is up? What I mean is how fast is fast? Speed is a relative thing. Having said that, we can offer comparison with Internet access in other countries in the region. Compared to (say) the internet in Alexandria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia's internet seem to be more consistent,

All Points of Presence (PoP) are managed by the Saudi Telecommunications Company (STC), which is the recently privatized "Phone Company".  They use modem banks equipped with 56Kbps V.90 Modems, which work pretty well. Access kingdomwide is through "360-xxxx" numbers which does a per minute charge back to your phone bill. This is over and above what you pay your ISP. Initially, there are 5,000 such lines available kingdomwide, divided evenly for all licensed ISPs, giving each one about 125 dial-in

Rumors circling in 1998 stated that Saudi Arabia will use a "white list" approach to filtering out sites that are considered offensive. This implied that all sites were blocked until proven non-offensive, as opposed to the more usual approach of "black listing" specific sites. This rumor proved to be totally untrue, and only certain offensive sites are blocked. The entity, called the Internet Service Unit (ISU) appointed to watch for