The number of mobile phone subscribers will rise to five billion during the next 12 months due to growing efforts to introduce developing nations to handset technology, the United Nations International Telecommunication Union has said.
“Even during an economic crisis, we have seen no drop in the demand for communications services,” ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Toure said in a statement at the Mobile World Congress.
“I am confident that we will continue to see a rapid uptake in mobile cellular services in particular in 2010, with many more people using their phones to access the internet.”
Toure said developing nations had used mobile handsets for health and banking services, and that people without bank accounts are able to use mobile subscriptions to make payments.
“Good examples include sending reminder messages to patient’s phones when they have a medical appointment, or need a pre-natal check-up,” Toure said. “Or using SMS messages to deliver instructions on when and how to take complex medication such as anti-retrovirals or vaccines,” he said, adding that such uses can save millions of US dollars and lives.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
