The number of prepaid mobile subscriptions in the Middle East crossed the 100 million mark in the second quarter, reaching 101.7 million at the end of June.

Prepaid services continued to dominate in both the Middle East and Africa, with a combined 321.55 million subscriptions at the end of June, accounting for 84.46 per cent of the total regional mobile market.

But the dominance of prepaid was more pronounced in Africa than the Middle East. The 219.86 million prepaid subscriptions in Africa at the end of June represented 94.55 per cent of all subscriptions on the continent, and in the Middle East, prepaid accounted for 68.39 per cent. The popularity of prepaid subscriptions is highlighted by Egypt’s third operator, Etisalat Misr, which launched in the second quarter, where 96.97 per cent of its 960,000 subscriptions by the end of June were prepaid. This is an even higher proportion than that of its rivals, Mobinil and Vodafone Egypt, which had 10.83 million prepaid subscriptions, or 93.94 per cent of its customer base, and 9.56 million, or 94.03 per cent of customers on prepaid tariffs respectively.

In Iran, the wholly prepaid Taliya network had 1.03 million subscriptions at the end of June, up from 125,000 at the end of the same quarter last year. Irancell had 781,900 prepaid subscriptions at the end of June, accounting for 46.39 per cent of its subscription base. Iranian incumbent MCI had 200,000 prepaid subscriptions at the end of June, accounting for just 1.12 per cent of its subscription base.