A number of recently published international studies demonstrate the UAE’s favorable performance from an international perspective across various ICT indicators. 

The UAE ranked the first of all the Arab states in the 2007-2008 Networked Readiness Index (NRI) study issued by the World Economic Forum, and 29th among all 127 countries assessed.  The NRI measures the capacity of an economy to fully leverage ICT for increased competitiveness and development.  The NRI study was published in The Global Information Technology Report 2007-2008 andis based on data collected by organizations such as the ITU, the World Bank, and the United Nations.

In terms of the individual indicators analyzed, the UAE ranked first among the Arab states on: internet user rates, international internet bandwidth capacity, the importance of ICT to government vision of the future, personal computers rates, ICT use and government efficiency, e-government readiness index, government prioritization of ICT, laws relating to ICT, and the number of telephone lines. 

Internationally, the UAE was found to have the lowest residential monthly fixed telephone subscription charges and the lowest cost of mobile telephone calls (along with Egypt, Italy and Hong Kong).

In another study, Measuring the Information Economy, the ITU developed an ICT Development Index (IDI) which combines 11 indicators into a single measure to assess the level of ICT development within a country.  The overall measure is also divided into three sub-indices relating to ICT access, use and skills which provide a further level of insight.

The study includes 154 countries which enables benchmarking globally, regionally, and at the country level.  Indices are provided for both 2002 and 2007 to enable progress to be measured over time.

Key findings from this study include the following:

• Mobile penetration rates in the UAE, at 176 per 100 inhabitants in 2007, were the highest in the world. 
• The UAE ranked the highest of all the GCC and Arab states in the ICT Development Index.
• The UAE ranked the highest of all the GCC and Arab states in the IDI infrastructure and access sub-index.  This sub-index is based on five indicators: fixed line penetration, mobile penetration, international Internet bandwidth per Internet user, the proportion of households with computers, and the proportion of households with Internet access. 
• The UAE also ranked the highest of all the GCC and Arab states in the IDI use sub-index.  This sub-index is based on the following three indicators: Internet user penetration, fixed broadband penetration, and mobile broadband penetration.
• The UAE recorded the fourth highest growth in ICT between 2002 and 2007 of all 154 countries examined in the report.
• The report categorizes each of the 154 countries into one of four groups used to describe the level of ICT within the economy: higher, upper, medium and low.  The UAE was one of the 33 countries placed in the highest category, and was the only GCC/ Arab state to be included in this group.   The other GCC countries were distributed between the medium and upper categories.
• The UAE ranked 6th in the world in the ICT Price Basket measure.  The ICT Price Basket measures the sum of the 2008 prices of fixed telephony, mobile telephony and fixed broadband Internet as a percentage of a country’s monthly Gross National Income (GNI) per capita.  The lower the price as a percentage of GNI per capita, the better the ranking. 
• The UAE ranked 3rd in the world in the fixed telephony sub-basket, which measures the 2008 prices of fixed telephony as a percentage of GNI per capita, and 6th in the world for the mobile telephony sub-basket.

In another study, the United Nations e-Government Survey 2008, the UAE is:

• The top ranking Arab state in terms of e-readiness.
• The top Arab state in the web-measure index which assesses the extent to which governments are providing e-government policies, applications and tools, and the 12th in the world.
• The fifth highest ranking country in the world in terms of transactional services.