Cell phone growth helps developing countries

BEIJING, March 2 (Chinese medianet) -- Mobile phone growth helps bolster emerging economies even as two thirds of the world's cell phone subscriptions are in developing nations, says a United Nations agency.

Among the developing countries, Africa has recorded the highest growth rate with a quarter of the population using mobile, the agency said Friday.

Now 28 percent Africans have a cellular subscription while only one in 50 Africans had a mobile in the year 2000, according to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).

The world has over three times more mobile cellular subscriptions than fixed telephone lines, and in some countries in Asia and Europe people have more than one contract each, pushing the mobile access rate above 100 percent.

The ITU in its Measuring the Information Society report, said the internet is far less accessible in poorer parts of the world, for instance in Africa where just 5 percent of the population now uses the Internet.

"Fixed Internet access in developing countries is still limited, and, wherever available, is often slow and/or expensive." Sweden topped the index, which measured countries' relative access to telephones, computers and communications networks and literacy rates, and South Korea placed second. Nordic states and high-income European, Asian, and North America also scored high.

But dramatic mobile cellular growth in developing countries, including Pakistan (ranked 127th), Saudi Arabia (55th), China (73rd), and Vietnam (92nd), helped bolster emerging economies since the last index was compiled, in 2002, the ITU said. Companies that have invested heavily in emerging markets include India's Bharti Airtel, Norway's Telenor, South Africa's MTN and Egypt's Orascom Telecom.

(Agencies)