The Associated Press Archives — LIRNEasia


Afghan cell-phone use booming

Posted on August 29, 2007  /  0 Comments

About 150,000 people subscribe to cell phone service each month in Afghanistan and there’s “no end in sight” to the growth, the country’s communications minister said Tuesday.  Afghan economy is predominantly rural, and trade and industry are badly hampered by crumbling roads and chronic electricity shortages. Not including the illicit trade in opium, the nation’s few exports include dried fruit and carpets.  But like in other developing nations, cell phone service providers have been doing brisk business, bringing communication to poor villagers who until four years rarely, if ever, used a telephone.  “In Afghanistan, the majority of our people will be connected through mobile phones,” Sangin told The Associated Press.
(Associated Press via NewsEdge) Cellular phone subscribers rose in India by a record 6.6 million in October, keeping the country’s place as the world’s fastest-growing mobile phone market, according to data released over the weekend. Subscribers for the GSM network grew by 4.7 million in September, while the number of mobile phone subscribers using CDMA technology increased by 1.9 million.
What will it take? 2004 December 26th 2005 March 28th 2006 July 17th Three tsunamis within less than two years; and the clueless Indonesian government can’t still get its act together. And faraway India is supposed to have issued a warning when there was no chance of a tsunami hitting India. CYA bureaucrat, I guess. A different error.