The Dominican Telecom Institute (Indotel) released statistics today showing unprecedented growth in internet access during 2006. The figures show a 37% increase in growth. This is the highest since 2001, in fact, the number of users has increased 10 times since 2001.  Internet accounts grew to 183,876, up from 134,545 in 2006.

In general the telecommunications sector showed robust growth for 2006 with mobile phone lines increasing to 4,558,351 this year up from 3,542,927 in 2005 and total lines reaching 5,502,685 in 2006 indicating a coverage of 61% of the population.

But the internet was at the forefront of the telephony sub-sector's growth. In 2001 there was a modest 128,764 registered users. This exploded to an estimated 1.4 million people with access to the internet in 2006.