ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré announced in New York that worldwide mobile subscribers are likely to reach the 4 billion mark before the end of this year. Touré was speaking in New York where he attended the UN Private Sector Forums addressing the global food crisis and the role of technological innovation in meeting the Millennium Development Goals.
The MDGs are focused on eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating epidemics, and ensuring environmental sustainability. The MDGs are include partnership for development making available the benefits of information and communication technologies. ICTs have been recognized as an important tool to achieve the MDGs.
According to the ITU press release: "Since the turn of the century, the growth of mobile cellular subscribers has been impressive, with year-on-year growth averaging 24 per cent between 2000 and 2008. While in 2000, mobile penetration stood at only 12 per cent, it surpassed the 50 per cent mark by early 2008. It is estimated to reach about 61 per cent by the end of 2008.
"The fact that 4 billion subscribers have been registered worldwide indicates that it is technically feasible to connect the world to the benefits of ICT and that it is a viable business opportunity," said Touré. "Clearly, ICTs have the potential to act as catalysts to achieve the 2015 targets of the MDGs."
The ITU stresses caution in interpreting the numbers and point out that the statistics reflect the number of subscriptions, not persons. Double counting takes place when people have multiple subscriptions. Also, operators’ methods for counting active prepaid subscribers vary and often inflate the actual number of people that use a mobile phone.
ITU also highlights that despite high growth rates in the mobile sector, major differences in mobile penetration rates remain between regions and within countries.
It notes: "The impressive growth in the number of mobile cellular subscribers is mainly due to developments in some of the world’s largest markets. The BRIC economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China are expected to have an increasingly important impact in terms of population, resources and global GDP share. These economies alone are expected to account for over 1.3 billion mobile subscribers by the end of 2008."
Image Courtesy of ITU
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