The International Telecommunications Union has recently released a new report about the number of mobile phone users in the world. The report showed that there were 3.3 billion mobile users by the end of 2007. This is about 49% of the world’s population.

The ITU said that more than two thirds of the mobile users in the past two years were from developing countries, specially in Africa. This is a positive sign that the developing countries are catching up with the latest technologies in the mobile world.

“The continued growth in the mobile sector is matched by no-growth in the fixed-line sector. Fixed telephone penetration has been stagnating at just under 20 percent globally for the last years and growth has been below one percent between 2005 and 2007,” ITU said. It’s obvious that there will be no need any more for fixed line telephones all over the world.

But even though the developing countries have made distinct growth in the mobile world, there is still a huge gap in the internet use and the availability of broadband connections. “Low-income countries, where broadband access remains very low, risk falling behind in an area that is particularly important in delivering innovative applications and services,” the ITU warned, “For more people to benefit from the potential of broadband and the applications that it can deliver, governments need to do their share to ensure that high-speed technologies become more accessible as well as more affordable.”

Source: news.com.au