According to GSM Associates, a trade grouping of mobile phone operators worldwide, up to 90 percent of the world’s six billion people will have mobile telephone coverage by 2010. The report added that the governments needs to remove customs and sales taxes to make handphones and services more affordable to the poor.
The coverage will be up from 80 percent currently, according to a study commissioned by the GSM Association, a trade grouping of mobile phone operators worldwide.
Despite what the GSM survey claims is close to 80 percent coverage currently, their recent report estimates the number of people with mobile phone connections at more than two billion today, or about 40 percent, of the global population. The group claims that mobile phone coverage could reach nearly 100 percent in the next four years if “governments used a pool of funds collected from telecom operators to extend mobile coverage to rural areas instead of using the money on fixed telephone line services, which are more expensive.”
The study added,”Mobile networks now cover 80 percent of the world’s population, double the level in 2000. This can be attributed almost exclusively to the investment by mobile operators and the liberalization of telecom markets by governments. By 2010, 90 percent of the world will be covered by mobile networks.”
The report added that of the 92 developing countries surveyed, 32 have set up “universal service funds”, a levy collected by the government from telecom operators to subsidize the rollout of telecom networks in rural areas. The levy ranges from one to six percent of revenues.
