Strong Mobile Scores But Business Connectivity Hits Tunisia’s Rating

Tunisia benefits from a relatively high penetration rate of mobile telephony and almost universal coverage of the population by mobile networks.  However, broadband penetration and internet usage are well below those found amongst the Scorecard’s strongest performers.

Tunisia’s performance on the business infrastructure metrics is weak.  The country gets low marks for the penetration of personal computers and secure internet servers.  Business investment in computing equipment and software is also low.  Tunisia earns a relatively good mark for secondary school enrolment, but lower scores for international outgoing traffic minutes and computer services spending

The country’s E-Government performance is also rather weak, but these metrics carry a low weighting in the Scorecard.

There do appear to be some clear directions for Tunisia to pursue to increase its connectivity rating.  The ITU suggests that the DSL business is a monopoly and the leased lines business is only partially competitive.  The country should consider policies that incentivize broadband deployment, including potential competition in the fixed broadband sector and timely and transparent regulation for the wireless broadband sector.

Tunisia Connectivity Performance by Scorecard Component