Africa's mobile subscriptions grow by 30 million

19 Jun 2012

Global mobile subscriptions are expected to grow by 85% via 3G networks by 2017 according to the recently released Ericsson Traffic and Market report which also indicates that Africa's mobile subscriptions have grown by more than 30 million during the first quarter of 2012.

The Traffic and Market report also shows that more than 9 billion mobile subscriptions will be achieved compared to 6 billion registered at the end of 2011. Mobile broadband subscriptions are projected to reach 5 billion by 2017, compared to 1 billion recorded at the end of 2011.

Douglas Gilstrap, Ericsson's senior vice president and head of strategy said that people nowadays consider access to the internet as a prerequisite for any device, adding that the mindset results from the growing demand for mobile broadband and increased data traffic.

"Operators recognise this business opportunity and are aiming to facilitate this growth and provide good user experience with fast data speeds through high capacity networks. Today, around 75% of the HSPA networks worldwide have been upgraded to a peak speed of 7.2 Mbps or above and around 40% has been upgraded to 21 Mbps," said Gilstrap.

The Traffic and Market report aims to share analysis based on various measurements including internal forecasts and other relevant studies to provide insights into the current traffic and market trends.

In the report, Ericsson also predicts that by 2017 half of the world's population will be covered by LTE/4G networks, with the number of smartphone subscriptions rising to around 3 billion in 2017 - compared to just 700 million in 2011.

Mobile data traffic continues to increase

The report further notes that total mobile data traffic continues to increase with data traffic also recording a double increase, mainly driven by video as well as smartphones. Overall, mobile data traffic is expected to grow by 15 times between 2011 and 2017.

The data in the report also shows variations between countries and regions. In the case of mobile net additions, China added the most subscriptions for a single country in Q1 2012 with 39 million, followed by India with 25 million. The Asia Pacific region added in total 93 million subscriptions, followed by Africa with 30 million.

The main continuous trend identified in the report is that everything is going mobile. This evolution is mainly being driven by people's increasing demand for anywhere, anytime connectivity and the use of video, cloud-based services and the internet - but also by machine-to-machine connectivity.

For more, go to www.ericsson.com/traffic-market-report.