-Australia is on the border, our number of mobile phones is roughly the same as the number of fixed lines," telecommunications industry analyst Paul Budde told ZDNet Australia. -We have around 11 million mobile phones and around 11 million fixed lines."
Ross Monaghan from Australian Mobile Telecommunications Authority (AMTA) said that the number of mobile phones has almost doubled in the last two and a half years. -Two years ago we had close to 5 million mobile accounts, now we have close to 12 million. If it hasn't overtaken already it soon will," he said.
These figures parallel the world stage, where a 40 percent growth in mobile phones last year saw the number rise to nearly a billion worldwide. This is on the brink of surpassing the number of landlines worldwide, which stands at 1.045 billion.
More than a dozen countries have already crossed the threshold and have 20 to 30 percent more mobiles than landlines. These include Taiwan, Hong Kong, Iceland, and European countries such as Italy, Portugal as well as the Scandinavian countries.
Unlike Taiwan and Hong Kong, Australians make far less calls on mobiles than on landlines. -We have more physical mobile phones so you would expect more calls to be made over the mobile network than the fixed network, but that is not the case. It's only about 30 percent of all traffic because the mobile rates are so high. People prefer to use fixed lines for this reason," Budde said.
-This will only change under competitive pressure," he added. -In Australia we basically have a duopoly between Telstra and Optus, and they keep prices as high as possible to protect their profits. That is hampering the uptake of mobile phone usage."
