Estimating the macroscopic demand for telephones is essential to long-term planning construction of telecommunication networks facilities. Although there are several useful forecast equations, they need some types and/or vast amounts of data that are sometimes unavailable, especially in developing countries. This paper presents a sophisticated telephone demand estimation technique that is based on the demands of residential and business users. It uses several parameters to estimate the increase in telephone demand. A simplified equation is also presented that is a function of only one parameter: normalized gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. This simplified equation is shown to be useful by using data for more than ten countries.