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DATA IDENTIFICATION
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Name
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Proportion of the population covered by a mobile network by technology
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Indicator purpose
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The purpose of this indicator is to track mobile network coverage.
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Abstract
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Proportion of population covered by a mobile network, broken down by technology, refers to the percentage of inhabitants living within range of a mobile-cellular signal, irrespective of whether they are mobile phone subscribers or users. The indicator highlights the importance of mobile networks in providing basic, as well as advanced communication services and will help design targeted policies to overcome remaining infrastructure barriers and address the digital divide. Many governments track this indicator and have set specific targets in terms of the mobile population coverage (by technology) that operators must achieve.
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Data source
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Public Utilities Commission (PUC)
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DATA CHARACTERISTICS
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Contact organization person
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Public Utilities Commission (PUC)
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Date last updated
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07-OCT-2019
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Periodicity
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Annual
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Unit of measure
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Percentage (%)
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Other characteristics
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The percentage of the population covered by a mobile cellular network can be considered as a minimum indicator for ICT access since it provides people with the possibility to subscribe to and use mobile cellular services to communicate. Over the last decade, mobile-cellular networks have expanded rapidly and helped overcome very basic infrastructure barriers that existed when fixed-telephone networks (often limited to urban and highly populated areas) were the dominant telecommunication infrastructure. While 2G (narrowband) mobile-cellular networks offer limited (and mainly voice-based) services, higher speed networks (3G and LTE) provide increasingly high-speed, reliable and high-quality access to the Internet and its increasing amount of information, content, services, and applications. Mobile networks are therefore essential to overcoming infrastructure barriers, helping people join the information society and benefit from the potential of ICTs, in particular in least developed countries.
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DATA CONCEPTS and CLASSIFICATIONS
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Classification used
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Disaggregation
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Based on the data for the percentage of the population covered by a mobile network, broken down by technology, and on rural population figures, countries can produce estimates on rural and urban population coverage. ITU produces global estimates for the rural population coverage, by technology.
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Key statistical concepts
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The indicator percentage of the population covered by a mobile network, broken down by technology, refers to the percentage of inhabitants living within range of a mobile-cellular signal, irrespective of whether or not they are mobile phone subscribers or users. This is calculated by dividing the number of inhabitants within range of a mobile-cellular signal by the total population and multiplying by 100.
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Formula
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OTHER ASPECTS
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Recommended uses
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This indicator is used by the Public Utility Commission to provide people with the possibility to subscribe to and use mobile cellular services to communicate and help to overcome very basic infrastructure barriers.
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Limitations
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Some countries have difficulty calculating overall mobile-cellular population coverage. In some cases, data refer only to the operator with the largest coverage, and this may understate the true coverage.
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Other comments
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This indicator is based on an internationally agreed definition and methodology, which have been developed under the coordination of ITU, through its Expert Groups and following an extensive consultation process with countries. It is also a core indicator of the Partnership on Measuring ICT for Development's Core List of Indicators, which has been endorsed by the UN Statistical Commission (last time in 2014).
All the metadata shown in this document was gathered from United Nation Statistics Division. The metadata was extracted from https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/.