According to information provided by the Geneva-based International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the United Nations specialized agency that handles all telecommunications issues, the DR already has a "teledensity" (number of phone lines per 100 inhabitants) of 9.4, up from 4.2 just nine years before. During that period some 400,000 new phone lines were brought into service in the DR, a majority of them cellular. The DR’s teledensity is projected by ITU to go as high as 15 by the year 2003. The DR’s 1996 teledensity of 8.2 was higher than the Latin American median of 7.8. As a point of comparison, teledensity in Bolivia is 5.3, Norway 5.7, Mexico 9.2, Brazil 9.3, Canada 62.7 and in the U.S. 64.2.
