Patterns in global fixed and mobile telecommunications development: a cluster analysis

In recent years, global mobile telephony has experienced spectacular demand growth that is unmatched by anything in the long history of fixed network-based telecommunications. The International Telecommunications Union estimates that, in 2002, the number of mobile subscribers worldwide (over 1.15 billion) surpassed the number of fixed main lines in service (nearly 1.13 billion) for the first time. Yet, as recently as 1991, there were only 16 million mobile subscribers as compared to 546 million fixed main lines worldwide, a ratio of 1-to-34. Are there patterns to the spread of mobile telephony, alongside conventional fixed telephony, in different parts of the world? In this paper, cluster analysis and related statistical techniques are used on a panel of 61 countries (representing different regions and levels of socio-economic development) to answer that question. The paper concludes that technological substitution in some countries, and economic substitution in others, may explain the observed patterns of development in global fixed and mobile telephony.