VIEW
The worldés favorite statistic about phone use is no longer true. So why wonét people just drop it?
Half the world has never made a phone call. Ités a striking statistic, especially handy when underlining the seriousness of the digital divide between the Western and the developing worlds. Future South African president Thabo Mbeki cited it in a speech he gave at the Information Society and Development Conference in 1996. Vice President Al Gore said it in 1998; former FCC boss Reed Hundt said it in 2000; HPés Carly Fiorina said it in 2001; and — though they were not debating each other at the time — Michael Moore and Newt Gingrich both said it in 2001. As did Kofi Annan, secretary general of the UN, in a presentation at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Not to be outdone, Tatang Razak, a spokesperson for Indonesiaés Mission in New York, raised the stakes in April:-After all,é he summed up in a speech before the UN,-most of the people in the world have never made a phone call.é
This is the kind of factoid that journalists call too good to check. Of course it was once true — but it canét continue to be true in a rapidly changing world. The sound bite first made an appearance in a speech by MCI executive Greg LeVert at TeleCon-94 in Toronto. He didnét actually conduct a world census; he guesstimated based on phone penetration data from the International Telecommunication Union. But pretend LeVert guessed right — that in 1994, half the world had never made a phone call. Telecom growth means it sure wasnét true in 1996 or 1998, and no amount of repetition and exaggeration will make it true today.
HALF THE WORLD HASN'T MADE A CALL - YEAH RIGHT
The ITU estimates that there were 689 million landlines in 1995 and a few more than 1 billion by 2001. This amounts to an average annual growth rate of slightly more than 7 percent. Put another way, half as many landlines were laid in the last six years of the 20th century as in the whole previous history of the world. Not as catchy as The Phrase, but more accurate.
The growth rate is even higher if you focus on the developing world. China alone went from 41 million landlines to 179 million during those six years. Nine others — Sudan, Albania, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Ghana, Nepal, Palestine, Rwanda, and Cambodia — tripled their hardwired telephone infrastructure. And 35 others — including India, Indonesia, and Brazil — doubled the number of landlines in the same period.
Mobile telephony makes those changes look glacial. The number of active cell phones in the world grew tenfold during those same six years (1995 through 2001), from 91 million to 946 million. In 64 of the worldés developing countries, the number of subscribers grew a hundred-fold or more; 45 countries started from zero. Senegal went from about 100 subscribers (no, thatés not a typo) to 390,800. Egypt went from 7,400 to almost 3 million. Romania went from 9,100 to almost 4 million.
CHINA ALONE HAS NEARLY 200 MILLION LANDLINES
Of course, the global population was also rising — but not nearly as fast. Between 1995 and 2001, the world population rose by about 8 percent, while in developing countries the number of landlines rose by 130 percent, and cellular subscribers by more than 2,300 percent. If we assume the original guess of half was right in 1994 (a big if), the revised estimate of the percentage of people in the world who have placed a phone call would be around two-thirds and rising — with an emphasis on the rising. Much more important than any particular penetration, however, is figuring how to maintain these high penetration rates. Pontificating about who has or hasnét made a phone call is merely a wasteful distraction.
And if the worldés poor are to be served by a better telecommunications infrastructure, there are things that need to be done now: privatize state telcos, introduce real competition, reduce corruption. Economic dynamism is a far better way to lay lines than any amount of erroneous and incomplete assertions on behalf of the poor, because while The Phrase has remained static for the past decade or so, the world has not.
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