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World Bank · Infrastructure

Mobile cellular subscriptions

Mobile cellular telephone subscriptions are subscriptions to a public mobile telephone service that provide access to the PSTN using cellular technology. The indicator includes (and is split into) the number of postpaid subscriptions, and the number of active prepaid accounts (i.e. that have been used during the last three months). The indicator applies to all mobile cellular subscriptions that offer voice communications. It excludes subscriptions via data cards or USB modems, subscriptions to public mobile data services, private trunked mobile radio, telepoint, radio paging and telemetry services.

Coverage
214 of 238 countries
Latest data
2024
Series
214
Unit
per 100 people
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Retrieved
2026-11-05
Indicator
mobile-cellular-subscriptions
Interva ID
worldbank-mobile-cellular-subscriptions

Recency

current

data to 2024; catalog to 2025

Provenance

2 steps

as the publisher declares it

Versions

1

catalog snapshots

Citation

BibTeX + CSL

versioned permalink

Quality profile

This profile describes what Interva can measure in the data. It does not claim the dataset is accurate, complete, or suitable for a particular use.

Recency

100%

Latest observation is 2024; the catalog broadly reports to 2025, so this data is 1 year(s) behind (current).

Method: Compares the dataset's latest non-projected period with the year most datasets in the catalog end in. Up to 2 years behind is current — annual data is routinely published a year or two late — and more than 5 is stale. Measured from the data, not from when Interva last crawled it.

Temporal completeness

82%

208 of 214 series skip at least one year inside their own span; the median series reports 82% of its years.

Method: Per series, years present divided by years from its first to its last observation; the median across series is reported. Annual periods are assumed, which holds for every series in the catalog today.

Geographic coverage

Measured

Covers 214 of the 238 countries in the catalog.

Method: Counts distinct geographies with at least one observation. Not scored: a regional dataset covering its region completely is not deficient for omitting the rest of the world.

History depth

Measured

The median series has 53 observations; the earliest begins in 1960.

Method: Counts non-projected observations per series. Not scored: a long history is useful for trend work and irrelevant for a cross-section.

Revisions

Measured

No observation has been restated in any vintage Interva has recorded.

Method: Counts values the publisher changed between Interva's publishes. Not scored: revising estimates is ordinary and often a sign of care, and the count is here so a reader citing a figure knows whether it moves.

Schema conformity

Not assessed

No declared schema or validation rules are attached to this dataset yet.

Validity

Not assessed

No field-level validation rules are attached to this dataset yet.

Consistency

Not assessed

Cross-series consistency rules are not defined yet. The obvious first one — whether two publishers measuring one concept agree within a stated tolerance — is a candidate.

2 scored from the data, 3 described without a score, 3 not assessed. Pipeline integrity: all 5 checks pass. Assessed 2026-11-07.

By country

Mobile cellular subscriptions for each of the 214 countries it covers, with the full history.

Latest observations

CountryPeriodValueUnit
Afghanistan202460.10per 100 people
Albania202489.13per 100 people
Algeria2024115.46per 100 people
Andorra2024155.69per 100 people
Angola202469.70per 100 people
Argentina2024140.23per 100 people
Armenia2024134.89per 100 people
Australia2024112.58per 100 people
Austria2024124.46per 100 people
Azerbaijan2024109.54per 100 people

Provenance

Who produced these figures, as World Bank declares it — not inferred, and each line says which published field it was read from.

  1. Produced by

    International Telecommunication Union

    World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators Database, International Telecommunication Union (ITU)

    declared by worldbank in sourceOrganization

  2. Read from

    World Bank

    World Development Indicators

    declared by worldbank in source

Versions

A vintage is a dated publish of the catalog. The current entry is a catalog snapshot; checksums are not recorded yet and are shown as such.

  • CurrentCurrent catalog snapshotchecksum not recorded

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Citation

Version: catalog snapshot 2026-11-05. The record labels this as a catalog snapshot because immutable dataset releases are not stored yet.

World Bank (2026). Mobile cellular subscriptions. Interva. https://interva.co/dataset/worldbank-mobile-cellular-subscriptions (accessed 2026-11-07). catalog snapshot 2026-11-05.

BibTeX
@misc{interva-worldbank-mobile-cellular-subscriptions,
  title        = {Mobile cellular subscriptions},
  author       = {World Bank},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://interva.co/dataset/worldbank-mobile-cellular-subscriptions}},
  note         = {Interva dataset worldbank-mobile-cellular-subscriptions; catalog snapshot 2026-11-05},
  urldate      = {2026-11-07}
}

DOI: not assigned (not assigned). The permalink is versioned by catalog snapshot; a stable dataset DOI is a later step.

API access

Every fact on this page is available from the API.

curl https://interva-api.nq5kq4f69b5zj.eu-west-3.cs.amazonlightsail.com/datasets/worldbank-mobile-cellular-subscriptions
curl -o worldbank-mobile-cellular-subscriptions.csv https://interva-api.nq5kq4f69b5zj.eu-west-3.cs.amazonlightsail.com/datasets/worldbank-mobile-cellular-subscriptions/download
curl "https://interva-api.nq5kq4f69b5zj.eu-west-3.cs.amazonlightsail.com/datasets/worldbank-mobile-cellular-subscriptions/citation?accessed=YYYY-MM-DD"
curl https://interva-api.nq5kq4f69b5zj.eu-west-3.cs.amazonlightsail.com/datasets/worldbank-mobile-cellular-subscriptions/quality

Full schema: https://interva-api.nq5kq4f69b5zj.eu-west-3.cs.amazonlightsail.com/docs

Open in the terminal to chart this series, compare it against other publishers, or export it with its provenance.

Mobile cellular subscriptions · World Bank · Interva