85% of the world’s population will have 3G coverage by 2017, says Ericsson

·         Mobile subscriptions reached 6.2 billion in Q1 2012

Ben Uzor Jr

An estimated 85 percent of the world’s population will have access to the internet using mobile internet by 2017, Ericsson’s second Traffic and Market Report – ‘On the Pulse of the Networked Society, released, weekend has revealed. According to the report, there will be close to nine billion mobile subscriptions, compared to six billion by the end of 2011. Industry analysts at Ericsson say machine-to-machine subscriptions will add significantly to this figure. The analyst argued that for many people around the world, the mobile phone will be the only means of accessing the internet. Douglas Gilstrap, senior vice president and head of Strategy, Ericsson said: “Today, people see access to the internet as a prerequisite for any device.

This mindset results in growing demand for mobile broadband and increased data traffic. Operators recognize 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 percent of the High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) networks worldwide have been upgraded to a peak speed of 7.2 Mbps or above and around 40 percent has been upgraded to 21 Mbps.” In the report, around 15 percent of HSPA networks now have speeds up to 42 Mbps in whole or parts of the network following a wave of upgrades. “Today, we are already seeing evolutionary steps towards increasing speeds to well over a 100 Mbps”, Gilstrap added.  

Ericsson also predicted that by 2017 half of the world’s population will be covered by Long Term Evolution (LTE)/4G networks. Interestingly, smartphone subscriptions will number around three billion in 2017 – compared to 700 million in 2011. Patrick Cerwall, head of strategic marketing and intelligence, Ericsson told journalist in Lagos during a video conferencing session that the total subscription of data-heavy devices will grow from around 850 million by the end of 2011. This, according to him will include smartphones, mobile Personal Computers (PCs) and tablets with cellular connectivity. “In 2017, around one third of installed base of mobile PCs is estimated to have 3G/4G subscription: the remaining will use Wi-Fi or Ethernet. Some mobile PCs with 3G/4G capability do not have active mobile subscription.”

Total mobile data traffic continues to increase – between Q1 2011 and Q1 2012 data traffic doubled – and the prime driver is video. Smartphones are also, and will remain, a key data traffic driver. The mobile data traffic will grow by 15 times between 2011 and 2017. Cerwall pointed out that the growth of smartphones has been tremendous. According to him, 40 percent of the world’s smartphone users access internet and apps even before getting out of bed. “Once out of bad, internet and apps are used almost constantly, peaking during the daily commute with 70 percent usage.” He said there was continued strong momentum for smartphone uptake in all regions. According to him, approximately 35-40 percent of all mobile phones sold in Q1 were smartphones, compared to around 30 percent for the full year 2011.

“Only around 10 to 15 percent of the worldwide installed base of subscription use smartphones, which means that there is considerable room for further uptake”, he added. 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.