The latest Human Development Report 2006 has disclosed that in 1990, Botswana had zero number of cellular phone subscribers, while for telephone mainlines, there were 18 subscribers out of 1,000 people.

This can be explained by the fact that in 1990, there was no legislation that called for the abolishment of Botswana Telecommunications Corporation (BTC) monopoly and the country had not licensed any mobile phone company. This was done in 1998.

However, by 2004, the country had 319 per 1,000 people with mobile phones after the licensing of Mascom and Orange, as mobile phone service providers.

Botswana is ahead of most of its peers in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) block.

Compared to Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland Zimbabwe, Botswana has the best telecommunications connectivity, but falls behind South Africa and Mauritius. While Botswana had 77 landline subscribers per 1, 000 people in 2004, Zimbabwe on the other hand had 25 subscribers out of 1, 000 in the same period.

For mobile phone subscription, in the same period, Botswana had 319 subscribers per 1,000 people while Zimbabwe cellular subscribers stood at 31 people, according to the report titled Beyond Scarcity: Poverty and the global water crisis.

Lesotho had only 21 mainline subscribers out 1,000 people in 2004, while cellular subscribers stood at 31.

Swaziland on the other hand, had 101 numbers of cellular subscribers in 2004.

However, in some instances, Namibia was better off than Botswana in terms of mainline connectivity. Out of 1,000 Namibians, 38 of them had landline phones compared to Botswana's 18. The figure was however, lower than Botswana's 77 in 2004, while only 142 Namibians used mobile phones in 2004.

Meanwhile, Mauritius was better off than Botswana because in 1990 out of 1,000 people of Mauritius, 53 of them had mainline telephones while the figure went up to 287 in 2004.

Mauritius also had more cellular phone users than Botswana at 413 subscribers per 1,000 people in 2004.

South Africa on the other hand, beat Botswana in terms of cellular connectivity because as in 2004, the giant SADC country had 428 cellular subscriber per 1,000 people.

Under the technology and diffusion section of the report, Botswana falls under the medium human development category.