Over the past years, the world has witnessed continuous growth in ICT services and uptake worldwide. As post-2008-crisis data become available, they confirm the sustained growth of the telecommunication and Internet market overall, albeit with some notable variations.
Fixed telephony continues to decline, as it has done since 2005, especially in developed countries, where a saturated fixedlline market has been overtaken by bobile-cellular telephony. Today, in developed countries, mobile-cellular telephony has reached saturation levels, too, recording penetration rates of over 100 per cent and a growth of only one per cent during the past year. In developing countries, by contrast, growth in mobile subscriptions is still buoyant, at 20 per cent, with no sign of a slowdown, thus confirming the continuation of the “mobile miracle”.