World Mobile Phone

Radio phones have a long and varied history that stretches back to the 1950s, with hand-held cellular radio devices being available since 1983. Due to their low establishment costs and rapid deployment, mobile phone networks have since spread rapidly throughout the world, outstripping the growth of fixed telephony.

In most of Europe, wealthier parts of Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, Australia, Canada, and the United States, mobile phones are now widely used, with the majority of the adult, teenage, and even child population owning one. Taiwan had the highest mobile phone usage in 2005 at 111 subscribers per 100 people. Hong Kong has the highest mobile phone penetration rate in the world, at 127.4% in June 2006.The total number of mobile phone subscribers in the world was estimated at 2.14 billion in 2005. Around 80% of world's population have mobile phone coverage as of 2006. This figure is expected to increase to 90% by the year 2010
At present India and China have the largest growth rates of cellular subscribers in the world. The availability of Prepaid or pay as you go services, where the subscriber does not have to commit to a long term contract, has helped fuel this growth on a monumental scale.

The mobile phone has become ubiquitous because of the interoperability of mobile phones across different networks and countries. This is due to the equipment manufacturers working to meet one of a few standards, particularly the GSM standard which was designed for Europe-wide interoperability. All European nations and most Asian and African nations adopted it as their sole standard. In other countries, such as the United States, Australia, Japan, and South Korea, legislation does not require any particular standard, and GSM coexists with other standards, such as CDMA and iDEN.