61 to 110: Musandam's 5G Towers Nearly Double in a Year

Oman's telecom regulator has quietly published one of its most granular data releases yet, and it puts a spotlight on a governorate that rarely gets the connectivity headlines: Musandam. According to the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA), the number of 5G stations in the mountainous exclave jumped from 61 in 2024 to 110 in 2025, an 80% increase in a single year.

🔑 Key Takeaways

• TRA data published on 9 September 2026 shows Musandam's 5G stations grew 80% year-on-year, from 61 to 110.
• Total telecom stations across the governorate rose from 212 to 275, roughly 30% growth in 2025.
• 5G residential coverage in Musandam reached 86.22% by the end of 2025, up from 85.30% a year earlier.
• Fibre-optic coverage remains comparatively low at 44.99% of homes, up only marginally from 44.82%.
• 17 of the governorate's 18 government schools now have ultra-high-speed broadband, a 94% coverage rate.

📡 What the TRA Data Shows

The TRA report describes Musandam as having gone through a year of expanding "infrastructure and telecommunications services, as part of efforts to enhance coverage, improve service quality, and keep pace with growing demand for telecommunications services across the governorate's various wilayats." The regulator's figures show new station deployment nearly across the board: total telecom stations climbed from 212 to 275 units, roughly a 30% jump, of which the 49 new 5G sites accounted for the bulk of the increase.

That took 5G household coverage in Musandam from 85.30% in 2024 to 86.22% in 2025, a modest but steady gain. Fibre-optic coverage moved far more slowly, edging from 44.82% to 44.99% of residential units, a reminder that fixed-line rollout in Oman's rugged, fjord-cut northern exclave remains far tougher and slower than mobile densification.

🏫 Schools Get Priority Treatment

One figure in the release stands out for its social impact rather than its raw technology angle: 17 of Musandam's 18 government schools now have ultra-high-speed broadband connections, a 94% coverage rate, with the remaining school relying on alternative technology to stay connected. That builds on TRA's broader push to wire up public education, which last year put 97% of Oman's public schools on high-speed fixed broadband nationwide.

🌍 Why Musandam Specifically

Musandam is not an easy governorate to wire up. Separated from the rest of Oman by a strip of United Arab Emirates territory, its terrain of steep mountains and deep sea inlets (locally known as khors) has historically made it one of the costliest places in the Sultanate to extend fibre and mobile infrastructure. It is also strategically sensitive, sitting on the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's busiest shipping and energy corridors, which makes resilient connectivity there a matter of both economic and national interest rather than just consumer convenience.

The governorate-level detail in this release is itself notable. TRA rolled out its Sabr data platform in August 2026 specifically to collect, verify and analyse information from every licensed operator, and this kind of granular, wilayat-by-wilayat breakdown is the sort of oversight the regulator said the new system would make routine.

📊 The National Picture

Musandam's numbers sit against a backdrop of steady, if unspectacular, national growth. Nationally, fibre-to-the-home subscriptions rose 6.4% year-on-year to 366,686 by the end of July 2026, while total mobile subscriptions climbed 1% to 8.44 million, according to NCSI figures reported by Muscat Daily. That mirrors a pattern covered earlier this year, where international bandwidth and fibre subscriptions have been expanding faster than headline mobile subscriber counts. Musandam's fibre lag relative to its 5G surge fits that same national story: mobile and wireless technologies are outpacing fixed-line builds in Oman's harder-to-reach regions.

🇴🇲 Why This Matters for Oman

Vision 2040 treats digital connectivity as basic infrastructure, on par with roads and power, and that only works if it reaches every governorate, not just Muscat and the main coastal cities. Musandam's isolation has long made it a test case for whether Oman's digital ambitions extend to its edges. An 80% jump in 5G stations and near-universal school broadband suggest the answer, for now, is yes, even as the slower fibre rollout shows there is still real work left to close the gap between mobile and fixed connectivity in the Sultanate's most remote corner.