In other words, one phone company has a customer base equivalent to the population of the United States in the country of perhaps as many as 1.5 billion people.

换言之，一个电话公司拥有相当于美国乡村多达1.5亿人口的客户群。

youdao

Capital One said its Venture card offer to match up to 100, 000 miles per customer hit one billion miles in just 25 days.

WSJ: Card Tricks Win Big Rewards for Some Travelers

These "smart" technologies can help business too, of course, as they help cement a community of four or five billion people who will be connected to each other via the internet, each and every one of them a potential customer.

BBC: Viewpoint: Megatrends that will change everyone's lives