Pipelines: Morocco has 695 kilometers of natural gas pipelines and 285 kilometers of oil pipelines. A pipeline carrying natural gas from Algeria to Spain and Portugal traverses Morocco and the Strait of Gibraltar.
Telecommunications: Morocco is in the midst of a campaign to deregulate and liberalize the telecommunications industry. In 2001 the country’s national telecommunications operator, Maroc Télécom (MT), was privatized. A Paris-based international media and telecommunications company owns a majority stake in MT. Following its privatization, MT was deprived of its monopoly control over fixed-line and mobile telecommunications services. A Spanish-Portuguese joint-venture company competes with MT for both types of service. Although Morocco’s telephone system uses modern technology, fixed-line service is relatively underdeveloped; in 2004 only 1.3 million inhabitants used fixed-line telephone service, about 4 percent of the population. By contrast, Morocco had more than 9.3 million mobile phone users the same year, representing about 30 percent of the population. Morocco had 3.5 million Internet users in 2005, but the Internet is expensive to access and lags well behind the telephone in popularity. Moroccans own 3.1 million television sets and 6.6 million radios.