The intense competition and millionaire investments of these companies has allowed the DR to stay at the vanguard of technological developments and continuously implement aggressive marketing programs to introduce new products and services to the Dominican market. As a result, the nation enjoys the latest in cellular mobile phones, beepers, facsimile, national paging services, telenet, email, 800 lines, prepaid calling cards, residential and commercial telephone systems, data transmission, wireless Internet, videoconferencing, electronic commerce, and other state of the art technologies.
The digital cellular telephone segment is expected to continue to be the fastest developing in telephone communication within the next years.
The Dominican Republic has the highest telephone use rates in the world, being the eighth in minutes talked between persons in the DR and in the US.
Telecommunications is the most dynamic sector of the Dominican economy today. The growth should continue. Telecommunications companies had plans to invest upwards of RD$17 billion or US$1,000 million in the DR in 2001. This is up from RD$12,300 million invested in 2000.
US-Sprint, Telmex of Mexico, Telefonica de España and Digi Cell from Ireland have shown serious interest in investing in the Dominican market, joining Verizon, Tricom, France Telecom and Centennnial.
Dominican telecom stats:
More than 20% of the Dominican population has a telephone.
DR is seventh among nations with the most telephone traffic with the US.
Telecom growth rate of average 23% over the past five years.
Consistent growth over the past five years of:
16.3% (1996); 19.3% (1997); 20.4% (1998); 16.6% (1999); 15.7% (2000).
Indotel data shows there are 338 radio stations, 46 television stations, four telephone companies and 119 cable TV companies. Dominican Telecommunications Institute (Indotel) statistics show there are more than 911,152 phone lines in the DR, for a 10.5% density (population 8,553,744 million).
Indotel statistics show for the first half of 2001:
Total number telephone lines: 911,152
Total number of residential lines: 601,364
Total number of business lines: 238,959
Total number of cellular lines: 927,617
Total number of beepers: 117,061
Internet lines: 58,875
For more statistical information, see Indotel statistics