Santo Domingo.– In the Dominican Republic, a country of 9.5 million inhabitants, there are almost the same amount of telephone numbers in use, said Dominican Telecomm Institute (Indotel) director Jose Rafael Vargas.

According to Vargas, the Dominican Republic is ending 2009 with a teledensity of 97%, and is expected to reach 100% in February 2010.

Indotel statistics show there are 963,265 fixed lines (9.9%) and 8,449,283 mobile phones in use (86.7%), which adds up to 9,412,548 (96.6%) lines in a country with a population estimated at 9,742,374 inhabitants.

“Even though we are far from being a society of knowledge, at least we have reached telephone teledensity and we are moving forward on wide access to the Internet,” Vargas pointed out.