Estimating Mobile Phone Non-subscribers and Quasi-subscribers by Sampling

Paper in proceeding, 2009

This paper advances a new concept, quasi-subscribers, to define the incidence of mobile phone multiple subscriptions. Through survey data, the paper shows that in Sweden the number of quasi-subscribers constitutes a significant portion of the mobile phone subscribers. Hence, there is a significant bias in the traditional method of measuring mobile subscribers which is mostly based on the number of subscriptions and active SIM cards in the population. This situation is likely to hold for many other countries. Such a bias may contribute to faulty policy, strategic and research analysis, with possibly unfavorable consequences for decision-making that is based on such analysis.