Qtel reaches 1.4 million telephone customers

Qatar’s monopoly telecoms provider Qatar Telecom (Qtel) has announced that it crossed the 1.4 million subscriber mark early this month, including around 1.2 million GSM mobile subscriptions and over 200,000 fixed lines. The achievement, in a country with a population of less than a million, was driven by positive customer response to recent promotions, particularly its current ‘Hala Line for Free’ campaign, according to a spokesperson. According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms database, wireless penetration in the country passed 100% in 2006, and Qtel signed up its one millionth mobile subscriber in March 2007. A rival GSM network being set up by a consortium led by Vodafone Group is scheduled to end Qtel’s monopoly by the end of this year.