http://www.english.hadhramaut.info Telecom sector achieves remarkable advancement in Unity era [The Source: SANA'A/hadhramaut.info/sabanews.net - 21/05/2011] Telecommunication sector has received a great attention in the time of the Yemeni Unity as it is considered one of development pillars and a basic player to achieve the sought after progress. Developing this vital sector took the form of a number of strategic projects aiming to cope with the accelerating international developments in the field of telecommunication sector and information technology as well as integrating with the world information network. Despite the Yemeni revolutions of September and October put the foundation stones for this sector, it was reinforced after the unification of the country in 1990 as Yemen practically reacted with the world development in the area of development and information technology. More efforts were exerted during the past period to cause a characteristic leap in this sector in the southern and eastern governorates in accordance with the same progress in the northern and western governorates. In 1990, there were 31,713 telephone lines only in the southern governorates all depending on old techniques compared with 122,153 telephone lines in the northern governorates depending on modern techniques. Therefore, all old telephone centrals were replaced by modern electronic telephone centrals and the big cities were linked to each other as well as to other cities equipped with big capacities, in addition to establishing a sea cable to connect Aden to the world most important capitals through Djibouti. A new international central with modern techniques was established to connect Yemen with all the world countries. Such efforts have increased telephone capacities in the national network for land lines up to 1.3 million in 2010 compared with 153,866 lines in 1990 while the working telephone lines increased from 122,672 lines up to 1,046,208 during the same period. As for telecommunication centers reached 15,992 by the end of 2010 and the number of ready lines to cover rural phone service from 1,527 in 1990 to 227,717 in 2010. The number of under operation lines in rural centrals reached 185,263. Internet service was also given a proper attention as it was first entered to the country in 1996 as the number of subscribers reached 563,299 by the end of 2010 compared to 473 subscribers in 1996. The government has established Telecommunication and Information Technology City with its efforts to improve this kind of science at a total of YR2.2 billion in its first stage. It also has created the Yemen Gate for Internet (YemenNet) to represent a passing gate to the world internet network. The government represented by the Ministry of Telecommunication and Information Technology has conducted a number of training and qualification courses over telecommunication through the General Institute for Telecommunication and opening its branches in a number of governorates, in addition to opening a number of academies affiliate to Cisco, Oracle and Microsoft. The ministry is working, through the 4th Five Year Plan, to provide a developed infrastructure for telecommunication and information technology to meet requirement of development and to cause a characteristic move in the national economy towards the economy of knowledge through developing telecommunication services and expanding the fixed network to provide requirements to get upgraded to the 2nd Generation. The plan will replace the old centrals in a number of governorates with 200,000 lines and extending some centrals in the governorates of Abyan and Amran with 519 telephone lines, in addition to expanding and improving the world network as well as activating Telecommunication and Information Technology City, National Program for Information Technology and improving the General Institute for Telecommunication. In this respect, Minister of Telecommunication and Information Technology Kamal al-Jabri has made clear that the ministry will improve telecommunication information technology sector by means of reframing the ministry in addition to other related means. He also noted that the ministry is working to improve the level of the government and private sectors' staff in the area of telecommunication and information technology.