Six billion mobile phone subscriptions in the world

[EnglishLady]

Thats a lot of chat !

There are almost as many mobile phone subscriptions in the world as inhabitants, says a United Nations telecom agency.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) stated in its report that there were about six billion subscriptions at the end of 2011.

There are nearly seven billion people on Earth, so it means roughly one subscription for every person.

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 ICT - information and communication technology.

"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," said Susan Teltscher, head of the agency's data division.

Sim cards used in a tablet or in a dongle to get internet access on a laptop computer were not taken into account, she added.
Mobile internet

The Geneva-based agency also said that slightly over two billion people - about one-third of the world's population - were internet users by the end of 2011.

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

There were almost twice as many mobile broadband subscriptions globally as fixed broadband ones, said the agency.

"The surge in numbers of mobile-broadband subscriptions in developing countries has brought the internet to a multitude of new users," said Brahima Sanou, director of ITU's Telecommunication Development Bureau.

"But despite the downward trend, prices remain relatively high in many low-income countries.

"For mobile broadband to replicate the mobile-cellular miracle and bring more people from developing countries online, 3G network coverage has to be extended and prices have to go down even further."

On 14 October, leading names in the ICT industry will gather at ITU Telecom World 2012 - ITU's global networking and knowledge-sharing event in Dubai.

Some 300 global leaders are expected to attend the conference, including heads of state, ministers, regulators, academics, and representatives of such companies as Cisco, Kaspersky Lab, Huawei, Verizon, Qualcomm, Ericsson, and others.

BBC News - UN: Six billion mobile phone subscriptions in the world

 

[Ragman]

Blah Blah Blah

 

[EnglishLady]

Blah Blah Blah

What! No pic .....


LOL

 

[Turtle]

Pay close attention to the Dubai meeting. Tops on the very short list on the agenda is government control of the Internet with the ITU being the primary world regulatory body.

 

[Ragman]

What! No pic .....


LOL

Fixed it ( I hope ).

 

[blackpup]

Pay close attention to the Dubai meeting. Tops on the very short list on the agenda is government control of the Internet with the ITU primary world regulatory body.

Yes indeed!! despotic governments all over the world are slavering over the thought of controlling the internet.

The above sentiment may be a hair over the top, but not by much!

jimmy

 

[billg27]

Does that include all the prepaid disposable phones and the Obama phones? LOL

 

[blackpup]

Pay close attention to the Dubai meeting. Tops on the very short list on the agenda is government control of the Internet with the ITU being the primary world regulatory body.

US ambassador: Internet fee proposal gaining momentum - The Hill's Hillicon Valley

"Another brick in the wall"

jimmy

 

[Turtle]

Oh, I know. I know. They've been trying to sneak this upon us little by little over the years. Mostly it's been disguised as security and safety concerns, and government partnerships, and what's best for the the masses.

For those who are unaware of all this, all you need to know is that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said last June that his goal and that of his allies is "to establish international control over the Internet" through the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

The ITU is a treaty organization that was founded to handle international communications standards, originally the telegraph, but later telephone and digital communications standards. A bunch of countries get together and agree on the standards so that communications devices in various countries can communicate with each other.

In 1947 it became a specialized agency of the United Nations.

But in 1988 a delegation of 114 countries met in Australia to negotiate how this new "Internet thing" was to be handled, and the stage was set to magically insulate the Internet from international economic and technical telecommunications regulations, and resulted in the greatest deregulation story of all time.

Since the Net's inception, engineers, academics, user groups and others have convened in bottom-up, nongovernmental organizations to keep it operating and thriving through what is known as a "multi-stakeholder" governance model. This consensus-driven private-sector approach has been the key to the Net's phenomenal success.


In 1995, a few short years after the Internet was privatized (moved away from government-only groups such as DARPA and closed academic networks), only 16 million people used the Internet world-wide. By 2011, more than two billion were online, and that number is growing by as much as half a million every day.

This explosive growth is the direct result of governments generally keeping their hands off the Internet.

Net access, especially through mobile devices, is improving the human condition more quickly, and more fundamentally, than any other technology in history. Nowhere is this more true than in the developing world, where unfettered Internet technologies are expanding economies and raising living standards and level of education.

Farmers who live far from markets are now able to find buyers for their crops through their Internet-connected mobile devices without assuming the risks and expenses of traveling with their goods. Worried parents are able to go online to locate medicine for their children. And proponents of political freedom are better able to share information and organize support to break down the walls of tyranny, which is just what tyrannical governments luv about the Internet.

And now governments want to put their vile, slimy and grimy hands all over it.

Russia, China and their allies within the 193 member states of the ITU want to renegotiate that 1988 treaty to expand its reach into previously unregulated areas. Reading even a partial list of proposals that could be codified into international law next December at a conference in Dubai is chilling indeed:

• Subject cyber security and data privacy to international control.

• Allow foreign phone companies to charge fees for "international" Internet traffic, perhaps even on a "per-click" basis for certain Web destinations, with the goal of generating revenue for state-owned phone companies and government treasuries.

• Impose unprecedented economic regulations such as mandates for rates, terms and conditions for currently unregulated traffic-swapping agreements known as "peering."

• Establish for the first time ITU dominion over important functions of multi-stakeholder Internet governance entities, such as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the nonprofit entity that coordinates the .com and .org Web addresses of the world.

• Subsume under intergovernmental control many functions of the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Society and other multi-stakeholder groups that establish the engineering and technical standards that allow the Internet to work.

• Regulate international mobile roaming rates and practices.

Many countries in the developing world, including India and Brazil, are particularly intrigued by these ideas. Even though Internet-based technologies are improving billions of lives everywhere, some governments feel excluded and want more control. Strong-arm regimes are threatened by popular outcries for political freedom that are empowered by unfettered Internet connectivity. They have formed impressive coalitions, and their efforts have progressed significantly. That's why the Dubai meeting should be watched very closely.

Upending the currently successful model with a new regulatory treaty is likely to partition the Internet, as some countries would inevitably choose to opt out. A balkanized Internet would be devastating to global free trade and national sovereignty. It would impair Internet growth most severely in the developing world but also globally as technologists are forced to seek bureaucratic permission to innovate and invest. This would also undermine the proliferation of new cross-border technologies, such as cloud computing.

A top-down, centralized, international regulatory overlay is antithetical to the architecture of the Net, which is a global network of networks without borders. Government likes borders.

No government, let alone an intergovernmental body, can make engineering and economic decisions in lightning-fast Internet time the way the Internet itself can, and has on a regular basis. Productivity, rising living standards and the spread of freedom everywhere, but especially in the developing world, would grind to a halt as engineering and business decisions become politically paralyzed within a global regulatory body when the red tape gets rolled out to achieve something in months or years that can be achieved in minutes or hours without the tape.

Any attempts to expand intergovernmental powers over the Internet—no matter how incremental or seemingly innocuous—should be turned back. Modernization and reform can be constructive, but not if the end result is a new global bureaucracy that departs from the multi-stakeholder model. Enlightened nations should draw a line in the sand against new regulations while welcoming reform that could include a nonregulatory role for the ITU. Internet reforms happen already, almost daily, and it happens without the "help" of governments, much less with the "'help" of a central regulatory authority that is under the direct control of the UN.

If you think an Internet Kills Switch with Obama's finger on it is repugnant, imagine the same switch with the UN's finger on it.

 

[layoutshooter]

"If you think an Internet Kills Switch with Obama's finger on it is repugnant, imagine the same switch with the UN's finger on it."

They are one in the same.

 

[blackpup]

Quite a few politicians and/ or government officals, would like to have the same status as the UN. enjoys, little to no accountablty for their actions.

jimmy

 

[blackpup]

Quite a few politicians and/ or government officals, would like to have the same status as the UN. enjoys, little to no accountabilty for their actions.

jimmy