The Turks & Caicos Islands leads the world in cell phone subscriptions, with 1.6 subscriptions per person, according to new numbers from research firm Informa Telecoms and Media. In fact, 30 countries have more cell phone subscriptions than people -- and the US is way down on Informa's list with a penetration rate of only 72 percent.

So what do the Turks & Caicos, Aruba, Luxembourg, Israel, Greece, and the UK have that we don't? Informa analyst Kathryn Bushnell explained:

For some of the smallest countries on the list, subscription numbers are pumped up by tourists or migrant workers, who aren't counted as part of the population. That doesn't explain the gap with Europe, though.

The phone business in the US and Europe works very differently, Bushnell said. The US is a land of cheap fixed lines, which aren't generally charged by the minute. To lure people away from their home phones, US mobile operators typically use long-term contracts with huge minute buckets, so callers can have the same chatty habits on their cell phones they do at home.

US phones are also generally sold at deeply discounted prices and locked to one carrier, which aims to make back the discount through a long-term, exclusive monthly relationship.

In Europe, on the other hand, home of the happy Nokia models you see on the left, 60% of cell phone accounts are prepaid, and up to 20% of users in some European countries have more than one. Because all European phones work on the GSM system with interchangeable SIM cards, and many are sold unlocked, you can easily swap cards to take advantage of special offers on different networks.

The US focus on long-term contracts also squeezed out folks with lousy credit, who for years were stuck with expensive TracFone accounts. That's changed in the past few years with the growth of less expensive prepaid carriers like Net10 and Virgin Mobile, though. That was never a problem in prepay-happy Europe.

For Informa's full list of the 30 countries with more than one cell phone subscription per person, click here.