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"Connecting" in 2009.....

There is no holding back the march of technology, whether it be in the West or so-called Third World countries - as the IHT reports:

"Six in ten people around the world now have a mobile phone subscription, signaling that portable phones are the communications technology of choice, particularly in poor countries, according to a UN report published Monday.

By the end of last year, there were an estimated 4.1 billion subscriptions globally, compared with about one billion in 2002, the International Telecommunication Union said.

Fixed line subscriptions increased at a much slower pace, to 1.27 billion from about one billion over the same period.

"There has been a clear shift to mobile cellular telephony," the agency said, noting that developing countries now account for about two-thirds of mobile phones in use.

In 2002, less than half of mobile subscriptions globally were in the developing world, it said.

The number of people who used the Internet more than doubled, the report found. An estimated 23 percent of people on the planet used the Internet last year, up from 11 percent in 2002. Poor countries still lag far behind on Internet access, with only 1 in 20 people in Africa going online in 2007.

Fixed broadband increased to almost 20 percent in rich countries, while globally just over 1 in 20 had access to fast Internet connections at home."

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