No need to adjust your set -- the United Nations communications chief has boldly predicted that half of planet Earth's population will be hooked on some sort of mobile phone before 2009 dawns. Granted, the numbers he's talking about do look strictly at subscriptions, so a small percentage will be skewed by those with multiple accounts (and thus, multiple numbers), but really, the forecast isn't all that outlandish. After all, we already hit 3.3 billion mobile phone subscriptions back in November of last year (and 4 billion lines overall). As predicted, it's growth in developing regions such as Africa and the Middle East which will boost the overall figure the most, with yearly increases in those areas expected to hit 27% and 25%, respectively. So, what are the chances a post eerily similar to this pops up in 2012 or so saying the entire world has a cellphone? Our trusty Magic 8-ball says "Signs Point to Yes."

[Via Core77, image courtesy of Road and Travel]

Looking for something just a little less fancy than the BlackBerry 8830 for taking your Verizon service 'round the globe? Yeah, we hear that -- and so does Motorola, releasing the Z6c slider with both CDMA / EV-DO and GSM radios on board. The phone is largely identical to the Z6tv, save that the MediaFLO-based VCAST TV support goes to the wayside (who thinks they're gonna be able to use that action in Greece, anyway?) in favor of the "World Edition" branding and support. You also get a 2 megapixel cam, microSD slot, and the full host of Verizon features like VZ Navigator, VCAST Music and Video, et cetera (which are all naturally CDMA-only) packed into a shiny metal shell that just might not tip off passers-by to your "I'm an American carrying a weird hybrid phone" status. Grab it for $180 after rebate.

Just last month we heard that there were some 2.68 billion mobile accounts currently active in the world, but a new study by Informa has found that there are actually 3.3 billion subscriptions. This number is somewhat significant considering that it's approximately half of the world's population, but alas, not half of all Earthlings actually own a cellphone. Researchers found that 59 countries had mobile penetration over 100 percent, suggesting that some individuals actually accounted for numerous mobile subscriptions. Sure, the figures here could be picked apart in a myriad ways, but why not just raise your handset to commemorate hitting the big three point three? You are one of them, right?

[Image courtesy of W3]

Go on, pick your jaw up off the floor -- this isn't that staggering, now is it? Considering all those cellphones that have been sold here recently, and the plethora of folks who just refuse to ditch that landline, four billion total phone lines seems just about right, truth be told. According to the International Telecommunications Union, our planet is now home to about "1.27 billion fixed lines and 2.68 billion mobile accounts," but the total number of people represented by these data is much less clear. Notably, the study found that "61-percent of the world's mobile subscribers are in developing countries," and further added that China and India were greatly to thank for reaching the milestone. And just think, there were less than 1 billion lines combined across the globe just 11 years ago.

[Image courtesy of OwlRecruitment]

There's been a lot of buzz these past couple days about the iPhone's FCC filing and what it says -- or rather, what it doesn't say -- about the handset's internals. The fear basically revolves around the fact that a lack of testing on the GSM 900 and 1800MHz bands indicates that it lacks those bands entirely, but we can assure the globetrotters out there jonesin' for an iPhone come next month that there'll be a full range of RF spectrum waiting for you. How do we know? Well, first of all, in the year 2007 (or 2005, for that matter) it's simply idiotic to release a wide-appeal phone with any fewer than four GSM bands. Quadband GSM chipsets have been commodity items for some time now and add virtually no expense to a handset's internals. Second of all, quadband phones never have their non-US bands mentioned in a filing, particularly in a test report. Follow the break for a walkthrough of exactly what we mean.