2026-09-13 · people
Mobile subscriptions outnumber people
Multiple SIMs mean global subscriptions exceed population — not everyone is connected.
There are more mobile subscriptions in the world than there are people. Multiple SIMs — separate lines for work, travel, or cheaper data — push subscription totals past the global population, but the headline masks a divide: in 2026, an estimated 78% of the world's 8.2 billion people have mobile access, leaving roughly 1.8 billion with no mobile subscription at all.
1 cell = 8.2 million people (0.1% of world population) · 1,000 cells
Context
Subscription counts are inflated by multi-SIM behaviour: one person can hold several active SIMs for work, travel, or cheaper data, so the global total of mobile subscriptions climbs above the number of subscribers. Headline subscription figures therefore overstate how many individuals are actually connected.
The underlying data comes from ITU, the UN's specialized agency for ICT statistics, which tracks mobile network coverage and subscriptions as separate indicators. ITU estimated 6 billion people — 74% of the world's population — were using the internet in 2025, up from 60% in 2020, with 1.3 billion coming online over that period.
Gaps persist on both measures: 2.2 billion people were still offline in 2025, and the 22% without a mobile subscription works out to roughly 1.8 billion of the world's 8.2 billion. ITU publishes these indicators split by urban and rural areas and by level of development, the cuts used to locate the unconnected.
ITU mobile network coverage vs subscriptions, rounded.
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Credit this grid as Inagrid — https://inagrid.com/e/2026-09-13-mobile-subscriptions