Active mobile cellular subscriptions per 100 people, from the ITU and World Bank. In much of the world there are now more subscriptions than people, and the mobile phone is the primary route to digital health in low- and middle-income countries.
Where fixed broadband and desktop computers are scarce, the mobile phone is the device through which people reach health information, messaging-based services, and increasingly clinical care. Mobile penetration is therefore one of the strongest predictors of where mobile health (mHealth) programmes can scale. This indicator counts active mobile cellular subscriptions per 100 people, compiled by Our World in Data from ITU and World Bank data.
How to read it
Values above 100 do not mean everyone has a phone: they reflect people holding more than one SIM, business lines, and machine-to-machine connections. The measure is best read as a proxy for the reach and maturity of mobile networks rather than a literal headcount of users.
What it shows
Mobile subscriptions grew from near zero in the 1990s to more than 100 per 100 people in most countries within about two decades, one of the fastest technology diffusions on record. Adoption in many low- and middle-income countries leapfrogged fixed-line infrastructure entirely, which is why mobile-first design has become the default assumption for digital health programmes outside high-income settings.
Caveats
Subscription counts overstate the number of distinct users wherever multi-SIM use is common, and they say nothing about smartphone ownership, data affordability, or network quality, all of which constrain what health services a connection can actually support.