The world now has nearly as many cell-phone subscriptions as inhabitants.
The U.N. telecom agency says there were about six billion subscriptions by the end of 2011 - roughly one for 86 of every 100 people.
The International Telecommunication Union said China alone accounted for one billion subscriptions. India is expected to hit the one-billion mark this year.
The agency says 2.3 billion people, or about one in three of the world's seven billion inhabitants, were Internet users by the end of 2011. But there's a strong disparity between rich and developing countries. ITU says 70 per cent of people who use the Internet live in wealthy countries, compared with 24 per cent in developing nations.
