BAJANS ARE EARNING a reputation for incessant talking.
According to the Economist of London, Barbados is a world leader in both telephone line connections and mobile phone subscriptions when measured per 100 head of population.
In its latest global ranking for telephones, the Economist, which publishes an annual Pocket World in Figures, placed Barbados in the tenth global position among the world’s top 40 countries.
The Caribbean island had 58.8 telephones for every 100 people in the country in 2008, the latest year for which statistics were available.
At the same time, the proliferation of cellphones in recent years has pushed Barbados into sixth place on the worldwide listing with 159.1 mobile phones per 100 people.
In effect, there are telephone lines in almost every house in the country while on average there are 1.5 cellphones for every person in the country.
In both telephone lines and cellphones, Barbados had more telephonic connections than Britain, France, Canada, Spain, Italy, Ireland and any African or Latin American nation.
But Barbadians aren’t alone in the region when it comes to telephone density. Bermuda, 89 per 100 people, led the global ranking, followed by the British Virgin Islands, 82.9; the Cayman Islands 68.3; and the US Virgin Islands 67.7.
In the area of cellphones, only the United Arab Emirates, 208; Estonia, 188.2; Bahrain, 185.8; Macau, 177.2; and Hong Kong, 165.9 had more subscribers per head of population than Barbados.
In 2007, the World Bank stated that telephone lines in Barbados had been connected for 46 out of every 100 people while mobile phone subscriptions had reached 80 per cent.
Six years ago, every Bajan on average made at least ten hours of overseas telephone calls, stated the World Bank.
