IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Winter 2014 - 50

Non-registered phones have no
access to mobile services.
The Republic of Belarus:
Belarus is a medium-sized market
that has many characteristics of
a modern western telecommunications market. Some restrictive
legislation is in place, especially
in the service sales area. Belarus
seems a promising, but non-democratic marketplace as far as mobile
Internet access is concerned. The
mobile penetration is 108% and is
the market is very competitive.
The People's Republic of
China: Mobile penetration in China
has reached 74% and continues to
grow rapidly. The mobile operator

monitored and the list of forbidden
network content is relatively long.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia:
Saudi Arabia has almost 180%
mobile subscription penetration.
The market regulation is strong,
however. There are several mobile
operators and the market competition is very healthy; 92% of
mobile users have the latest generation of smartphones. The Internet
is censored to a great extent and
a dedicated web page is set up for
reporting any content that users
believe should be blocked. The KSA
regularly censors pornographic content and dissenting political or religious content, along with websites

In China, over 30 million new
subscribers were added to mobile
networks in the first trimester
of 2012 alone.
China Mobile is the largest telecom
company in the world. Chinese state
organizations also operate the largest Internet monitoring and censorship system in the world.
The Islamic Republic of Iran:
In Iran, the state has a significant
share in the ownership structure of
the mobile operators. The mobile
market penetration in Iran is 72%.
There are over 54 million mobile
subscribers in the country. The Iranian Internet police require the users
of cybercafés to produce an ID, and
cameras must be installed to monitor their usage. The use of tools for
circumvention of content filtering,
VPN (Virtual Private Networks),
and USB flash drives are banned.
Web sites with forbidden content
are closed down and blocked.
The Sultanate of Oman: As of
late 2012, mobile subscription penetration in Oman reached almost
160% of the population. The use of
non-licensed VoIP services is forbidden and Skype is blocked. Communication tools, such as emails
chat rooms, and telephones, are
50

focused on human rights issues. In
2009, hidden cameras were installed
in Internet cafés to record faces and
names of all users.
The Syrian Arab Republic:
Syria has the lowest level of mobile
penetration in the region at 58%.
There are only two mobile operators
in the market; a share of their profits goes to the state. The market is
tightly controlled by organizations
that are closely aligned with the government. The operators block many
text messages that contain words
such as Freedom, Demonstration,
Group, Revolution, and similar.
The Republic of Tunisia:
Tunisia as about 117% mobile penetration with two mobile operators.
The Tunisian government tasked a
committee to monitor corruption,
and to provide insight on communication traffic as well.
The Republic of Uzbekistan:
Uzbekistan has the highest growth
rate of mobile subscribers among the
former Soviet Union Republics with
24.3 million mobile subscribers at the
end of 2011. There is only one ISP,

the Uzbek telecom. News websites
and online newspapers are blocked.
The Socialist Republic of Vietnam: In Vietnam, mobile penetration
has reached 137% of the population
over the last 9 years. Currently, there
are over 119 million subscribers.
Ownership of the mobile networks
is state based, firewalls are used to
prevent access to some web sites,
and call tracing is used for those who
are identified as "activists." Eighteen
bloggers and Internet users have
been arrested in the last five years.
Some social network websites are
also on a "black list."

User Community Overview
Applied Survey Methodology
The identified top five mobile operators in the above-mentioned countries generate revenues of more
than US$300 billion and represent
over 1.7 billion subscribers. The
markets researched in this paper
represent almost 1.4 billion mobile
service subscribers: 500 million
of those are active users of mobile
data services. From the 44 mobile
operators included in the study,
nine are 100% state owned, and
the operations of the others are
driven by state decisions. Others are strongly controlled by the
state. Over 60% of the users who
took part in the survey chose prepaid mobile service subscriptions,
and just over 36% have a post-paid
contract. Seventy-nine percent of
respondents could access the Internet from their mobile phones, but
almost 18% could not.
Carrying out the user community survey was challenging task
and therefore it was carried out with
the help of in-country experts. The
experts ensured that the surveyed
users were approached randomly.
They were asked to participate as
anonymous respondents. The survey questions were offered in the
respondents' preferred national
language. The engaged local
experts made sure that the demography of the sample was adequate,

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

WINTER 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Winter 2014