| Code | IT.INT.CTRF.MN.PC |
| Indicator Name | International voice traffic, mobile cellular network (minutes per person) |
| Long definition | International voice traffic is the sum of international incoming and outgoing telephone traffic (in minutes). |
| Source | International Telecommunication Union, World Telecommunication/ICT Development Report and database, and TeleGeography. |
| Topic | Infrastructure: Communications |
| Periodicity | Annual |
| Aggregation method | Weighted average |
| Statistical concept and methodology | Data are sum of outgoing mobile minutes to international and incoming international minutes to mobile divided by population. Outgoing mobile minutes to international includes number of mobile minutes originating in a country to destinations outside that country to any destination. Incoming international minutes to mobile network includes number of incoming minutes (fixed and mobile) received by mobile networks from another country.
Data on fixed telephone lines and mobile cellular subscribers are derived using administrative data that countries (usually the regulatory telecommunication authority or the Ministry in charge of telecommunications) regularly, and at least annually, collect from telecommunications operators. |
| Development relevance | The quality of an economy's infrastructure, including power and communications, is an important element in investment decisions for both domestic and foreign investors. Government effort alone is not enough to meet the need for investments in modern infrastructure; public-private partnerships, especially those involving local providers and financiers, are critical for lowering costs and delivering value for money. In telecommunications, competition in the marketplace, along with sound regulation, is lowering costs, improving quality, and easing access to services around the globe.
Access to telecommunication services rose on an unprecedented scale over the past two decades. This growth was driven primarily by wireless technologies and liberalization of telecommunications markets, which have enabled faster and less costly network rollout. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) estimates that there were about 6 billion mobile subscriptions globally in the early 2010s. No technology has ever spread faster around the world. Mobile communications have a particularly important impact in rural areas. The mobility, ease of use, flexible deployment, and relatively low and declining rollout costs of wireless technologies enable them to reach rural populations with low levels of income and literacy. The next billion mobile subscribers will consist mainly of the rural poor. Access is the key to delivering telecommunications services to people. If the service is not affordable to most people, goals of universal usage will not be met.
Fixed telephone lines are those that connect a subscriber's terminal equipment to the public switched telephone network and that have a port on a telephone exchange. This term is synonymous with the term main station or Direct Exchange Line (DEL) that is commonly used in telecommunication documents. Integrated services digital network channels and fixed wireless subscribers are included. Mobile cellular telephone subscriptions are subscriptions to a public mobile telephone service using cellular technology, which provide access to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) using cellular technology. It includes postpaid and prepaid subscriptions and includes analogue and digital cellular systems.
Over the past decade new financing and technology, along with privatization and market liberalization, have spurred dramatic growth in telecommunications in many countries. With the rapid development of mobile telephony and the global expansion of the Internet, information and communication technologies are increasingly recognized as essential tools of development, contributing to global integration and enhancing public sector effectiveness, efficiency, and transparency. |
| Limitations and exceptions | Operators have traditionally been the main source of telecommunications data, so information on subscriptions has been widely available for most countries. This gives a general idea of access, but a more precise measure is the penetration rate - the share of households with access to telecommunications. During the past few years more information on information and communication technology use has become available from household and business surveys. Also important are data on actual use of telecommunications services. Ideally, statistics on telecommunications (and other information and communications technologies) should be compiled for all three measures: subscriptions, access, and use. The quality of data varies among reporting countries as a result of differences in regulations covering data provision and availability.
Discrepancies between global and national figures may arise when countries use a different definition than the one used by ITU. For example, some countries do not include the number of ISDN channels when calculating the number of fixed telephone lines. Discrepancies may also arise in cases where the end of a fiscal year differs from that used by ITU, which is the end of December of every year. A number of countries have fiscal years that end in March or June of every year. Data are usually not adjusted but discrepancies in the definition, reference year or the break in comparability in between years are noted in a data note. For this reason, data are not always strictly comparable. Missing values are estimated by ITU. |
| General comments | Restricted use: Please cite the International Telecommunication Union for third-party use of these data. This indicator is not available in the World Development Indicators time series database. |
| License URL | https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/public-licenses#cc-by |
| License Type | CC BY-4.0 |
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