Over Half Of Humanity Use Cell Phones

[bananas]

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http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/006008.html

March 03, 2009
Over Half Of Humanity Use Cell Phones

Cellular telephone infrastructure is a lot easier to build than ground phone lines to every dwelling. So countries that are still too underdeveloped to have widespread land line phone service are getting mobile phone networks. Cellular phone technology has now spread so far and gotten so cheap that likely more than half of humanity use cell phones.

There are now 4.1 billion mobile subscriptions in the world, a global penetration rate of 61.1 percent: This compares to 1.270 billion fixed line subscribers, corresponding to a penetration rate of 18.9 percent.

Since some people have multiple mobile phone subscriptions (e.g. one for one and one for home) probably less than 61% of the world's people have phones. By contrast, in poorer countries mobile phones are shared and rented out. Also, people on pay-for-use plans can end up using their phones very little.

Even Africa has widespread cellular phone use. One has to wonder how many hungry people have cell phones. Also, how hard is to for them to keep the phones charged?

While just 1 in 50 Africans had a mobile in the year 2000, now 28 percent have a cellular subscription, according to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).

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edit to add a graph:

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. Half of population triangulated.

[CRF450]

2. Wow, already a drop in land line use?

No surprise. Only a cellphone for me too.