By Joseph Thavaraja
90% of world population now has mobile network access. And close to a quarter (23%) of the 8.3 billion world population has access to Internet, according to International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
Released on the eve of the first ever World Statistics Day (Wednesday October 20), “The World in 2010: ICT Facts and Figures” by ITU says that 90% of world population now has mobile network access (this, of course, does not mean that 90% ‘own’ a mobile phone-only that they have ‘access’ to mobile networks/coverage). ITU however warns ‘mobile cellular growth is slowing worldwide’. It adds that among the estimated 5.3 billion mobile subscriptions (by end 2010), 72% -that is 3.8 billion- will be from the developing world. On the other hand, in the developed countries, growth in mobile sector has slowed ‘considerably’ during the past five years.
Data (‘SMSes’), rather than voice services (‘calls’) are leading the growth in mobile services with close to 200,000 text messages being sent every second-over the period of 2007 to end 2010, the global SMS volume stands at a ‘staggering 6.1 trillion’, said ITU. Average cost of an SMS is US $ 0.07 (SL Rs 8.00) and every second, Rs 1.5 million worth SMSes (US $ 14000) transmitted globally.
People are moving rapidly from 2G to 3G platforms, across globally and in 2010, 143 countries were offering 3G commercially. ITU says that Sweden, Norway, Ukraine and the United States have started to offer services at even higher broadband speeds called as 4G, which is the next generation wireless platform.
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