World phone use statistics debunked

November 14, 2004 There's an oft-quoted statistic that half the world has still not made a telephone call. It might have been true less than a decade ago, but it isn't now. The infamous statistic first appeared in print in late 1994, when the Toronto Sun quoted it as part of MCI executive Greg LeVert's speech at TeleCon '94. LeVert was making a projection based on phone penetration data from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the statistic was not meant to be taken as gospel even back then. In context it was actually used to dramatise the magnitude of the coming telecommunications change.

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