90% of the world’s population is now covered by a mobile cellular network
Ubiquitous mobile
The number of fixed telephone lines worldwide continues to drop – but the drop has been massively more than compensated for by the growth in mobile.
- There were around 57 million fewer fixed telephone lines at the end of 2009 than there were at the end of 2006.
- There were 1.9 billion net additional mobile cellular subscriptions globally between the end of 2006 and 2009. Over 1.6 billion of these were in the developing world, compared to fewer than 300 million in the developed world.
- In many developing countries more than half of rural households now have a mobile phone.
- In China and India, the two most populous nations in the world, over 90% of villages are now connected – thanks to mobile.
Time to focus on Internet and broadband
75% of households worldwide have a TV. Only 25% have Internet access.
- Close to two thirds of people in the developed world now have access to the Internet. Four fifths of people in the developing world do not.
- Most Internet growth, however, is coming from the developing world, which accounted for 600 million of the 777 million new Internet users worldwide between the end of 2005 and the end of 2009.
- By the end of 2008 there were more Internet users in the developing world than in the developed world.
- In the four years to the end of 2009, fixed broadband penetration rates in the developing world almost tripled, and mobile broadband penetration rates grew more than tenfold.
Data and analysis in this ITU Statshot are drawn from the ITU World Telecommunication/ICT Development Report 2010 and the ITU World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators database.
Further ICT statistics are available online at ITU’s ICT Eye, at:
http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/icteye/Default.aspx
ITU also publishes a full range of current statistics and analyses. For further information see:
http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/publications