Cell phones ubiquitous globally, but 1 in 8 now have mobile Internet

About one in eight people around the world can now connect to the Internet wherever, and whenever, they want to. A United Nations report has found that active mobile broadband subscriptions surged last year, reaching 872 million worldwide, up from 531 million in 2009.

In rich countries almost every second person has a high-speed mobile subscription, while in poor countries it's still just one in every 20 people. But poor countries showed the sharpest rise — about 160 percent year-on-year — as customers passed up costly fixed-line broadband connections in favor of affordable cell phone plans that allow them to access the Web, email and other online services on the go. The report by the International Telecommunication Union concluded cell phones in general are now "de facto ubiquitous" with more than 5 billion people having some kind of cellular subscription. The survey of 152 countries also found a growing divide between countries with super-fast broadband — like Sweden, South Korea and Japan — and those where high-speed access is lagging, particularly in Africa.