The dutch numbers are from 2009, although somehow they claim to be from 2013.
Some numbers (from other countries) are from 2019 so what they are comparing are the number in 2009 in one country to the number of another country in 2019.
The list is alright but don't put rankings in front of it as it's apples and oranges.
The list as is seems to be of low value, beyond stating what most people would have likely already assumed to be true.
There are 74 countries on the list and only three have very unusually low figures: Cuba, North Korea, Ethiopia. The first two are obvious, the last one has probably changed a lot since ~2013.
After that you spike up to Lebanon at 64 phones per 100 people, with data from 2010. So that's probably 90+ now.
The extreme majority of all adults globally now have a mobile phone, even if it's a $20 KaiOS phone.
In many countries people carry more than one phone/SIM card. Mostly for separation of concerns, i.e business and pleasure.
Also for tariffs across providers. It isn't unusual to have one carrier better for data and another for voice/sms.
Another significant factor is contacts. If your contacts are on one network and you are on another, there is enough motivation to get a second device as intra-network is cheaper than cross-network
It would be interesting to know what prevalence of dual-sim phones are in those countries. Equally tourist levels as there appears to be no single definition of active phone numbers per country. Do they include roaming numbers, some may, some may not. But no single source for this data set and each number set has its own source for that data, which have no standard metric across all sources for how they are measured.
But certainly a more insightful way of viewing this data than the totals alone.
Interesting. I would love to see a number for Austria - until this month, it was IIRC one of the few EU countries which didn't require any form of identification for a prepaid phone.
It was the same for Romania but that is about to change because of a kidnapping/murder case and a media shitstorm regarding fake emergency number calls and geotracking of callers.
What macro factors tend to influence the connections/100 citizens? I don't see what Panama, Sri Lanka, Finland, and Saudi Arabia would have in common to have such a high number of phone numbers per capita.
The world's first GSM call was made in Finland. The first mass-produced GSM phone, the Nokia 1011, was also made in Finland. Finland may perhaps be the outlier when it comes to phones.
Sorting by "connections/100 people" is interesting. The top appears to be correlated somewhat to oppressive governments but only loosely (Costa Rica?).
I’d revise that model, as a general rule West Africa is more stable and developed than the east, especially so when your neighbors are the Sudans and Somalia..
