By civilians

This Railfone found on some Amtrak trains in North America uses cellular technology.

See also: List of mobile network operators

An increasing number of countries, particularly in Europe, now have more mobile phones than people. According to the figures from Eurostat, the European Union's in-house statistical office, Luxembourg had the highest mobile phone penetration rate at 158 mobile subscriptions per 100 people, closely followed by Lithuania and Italy.^[7] In Hong Kong the penetration rate reached 139.8% of the population in July 2007.^[8] Over 50 countries have mobile phone subscription penetration rates higher than that of the population and the Western European average penetration rate was 110% in 2007 (source Informa 2007). The U.S. currently has one of the lowest rates of mobile phone penetrations in the industrialised world at 85%.

There are over five hundred million active mobile phone accounts in China, as of 2007, but the total penetration rate there still stands below 50%. The total number of mobile phone subscribers in the world was estimated at 2.14 billion in 2005. The subscriber count reached 2.7 billion by end of 2006 according to Informa^{[citation needed]}, and 3.3 billion by November, 2007, thus reaching an equivalent of over half the planet's population. Around 80% of the world's population has access to mobile phone coverage, as of 2006. This figure is expected to increase to 90% by the year 2010.

In some developing countries with little "landline" telephone infrastructure, mobile phone use has quadrupled in the last decade.^[12] The rise of mobile phone technology in developing countries is often cited as an example of the leapfrog effect.