Mobile Use Exceeding Six Billion

[Troy]

There are almost as many mobile phone subscriptions in the world as people, a United Nations telecom agency has said.
A report by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) said there were about six billion subscriptions at the end of 2011.

There are nearly seven billion people on Earth.

Almost one billion subscriptions were in China, the study found.

The report, called Measuring the Information Society 2012, looked at 155 countries, assessing their access to and use of information and communication technology (ICT).

The head of the agency's data division, Susan Teltscher, said: "We count Sim cards, not the number of devices or people, so if one person has two Sim cards in one device, it counts as two subscriptions; and we count monthly subscriptions as well."

Sim cards used in a tablet or to access the internet on a laptop computer had not been taken into account, she added.

The Geneva-based agency also said almost two billion people - about one-third of the world's population - had been internet users by the end of 2011.

In developed countries, 70% of the population was online, compared with 24% in developing regions, it said.

It is pretty amazing that there is almost one mobile phone per person in the world. Even people in developing regions have mobile phones and that is the most common way for them to be connected to the internet, through their mobile.

Does anyone here actually have more than one mobile phone? Does anyone not have a mobile phone?

 

[Rated R Superstar]

I've only got the one, all I need. I know sometimes people need 2, one for personal life, and one for work. But it's kind of crazy that there is that many phones in the world.