Telecommunications in Syria - Internet

Internet

Country code: The top level domain for Syria is .sy.

There were 4,469,000 Internet users in Syria as of June 2011 for a 19.8% Internet penetration rate. Syria ranks 12th out of 14 countries in the Middle East region, just behind Jordan (26.8%) and Lebanon (29.0%) and ahead of Yemen (9.7%) and Iraq (2.8%). Growth in the number of Internet users has been fairly steady since 2005:

Year	Internet users	% of population
2000	30,000	0.2%
2002	220,000	1.2%
2005	800,000	4.2%
2009	3,565,000	16.4%
2010	3,935,000	17.7%
2011	4,469,000	19.8%

There were 420 Syrian Internet hosts in 2010, placing Syria 187th out of 231 in the world.

With a measured download speed that averages 768 kbit/s, the speed of the Internet in Syria is relatively slow compared to the world-wide average of 4.6 Mbit/s.

ADSL service in Syria has been available since 2003. However, ADSL is not available in all locations and, where available, the local telco may not have enough ports for immediate activation. Through 2009 broadband Internet access had reached less than 0.2% of the Syrian population.

The 3G wireless Internet is available in all major cities as well as cities with significant tourism. 3.5G EDGE wireless Internet is available through mobile network operators, SyriaTel and MTN. Wireless Internet is accessed using a USB stick purchased from the mobile operators. In addition, 3G SIM cards for use on mobile phones may be purchased with a data plan. However, only WCDMA phones support data at the moment.

High-speed Internet is also available through many Internet cafes.