Wired.  Clay Shirkey with another stat on how things are accelerating.

The ITU estimates that there were 689 million landlines in 1995 and a few more than 1 billion by 2001. This amounts to an average annual growth rate of slightly more than 7 percent. Put another way, half as many landlines were laid in the last six years of the 20th century as in the whole previous history of the world.

[John Robb's Radio Weblog]

How about just putting it clearly:

Put another way, [almost] one-third of all the world's landlines were laid in the last six years of the 20th century.

10:25:26 AM