World achieves two billion mobile phone connections

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World achieves two billion mobile phone connections

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September 21, 2005 Society passed a significant milestone earlier this week when the total number of mobile phone connections worldwide passed the 2 billion mark according to Wireless Intelligence, a venture between the GSM Association and reseach company Ovum. The mobile phone entered society less than a quarter of a century ago – it took two decades to pass the one billion connections mark, and just over three years to make it to two billion. Given the world has approximately 6.42 billion people, the mobile phone has now reached approximately 30% penetration of the global population.

With the mobile phone increasingly becoming the centre of convergence, it is interesting to note that the Internet is now approaching the one billion user mark, and although it is actually older than the mobile phone, it only began commercialisation just over a decade ago. Logically, as mobile handset functionality grows and includes internet connectivity, there will be a point in the next decade where internet connectivity will begin to catch mobile connections again, though at present the growth of mobile is outsripping all other mediums.

It was only three years ago that the number of mobile connections passed the number of fixed line connections