Telecommunications in Senegal

Telecommunications In Senegal

Senegal has an excellent telecommunications infrastructure, which is digitized. Sonatel, Senegal’s main telecommunications operator, continues to dominate the market. It was privatized in 1997 with France Telecom as the strategic partner. Liberalization of some services accompanied privatization. Two companies now provide cellular telephone services, and there is a competitive Internet services market. As a result, there has been a boom of Internet-related activities and services and in cell phone usage.

In 2007, sales generated by the telecommunications sector accounted for more than 7 percent of the GDP. These last few years have witnessed the spectacular growth of mobile telephony with 3,434,000 subscribers in 2007 and 1,537,000 respectively in 2005. The country has around 278,000 landlines for 11.9 million inhabitants. In addition, cable, telex, fax and Internet services are available. The Internet penetration rate is low (0.19 percent). A number of cyber cafés are located in Dakar and other cities.