3G To Cover 85% Of World By 2017 – Ericsson

Almost all (85 percent) of the world’s population will have 3G coverage by 2017, with mobile broadband the primary method of accessing the Internet for many people, according to Ericsson’s Traffic and Market Report.

More than half will also have access to Long Term Evolution 4G networks, according to the report, which also predicted a rise in mobile phone, mobile broadband and smartphone subscriptions, as well as a 15-fold increase in mobile data traffic by the end of 2017.

Data growth

“The main continuous trend identified in the report is that everything is going mobile,” said Ericsson. “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.”

According to the report, mobile phone subscriptions will reach nine billion by 2017, an increase from the current 6.2 billion, a number swelled by 170 million new contracts added in the first quarter of 2012. In addition, smartphone subscriptions are expected to reach the three billion milestone and mobile broadband users are set to rise from one billion to five billion by the end of 2017.

China was the biggest contributor with 39 million new subscriptions, followed by India with 25 million. Asia-Pacific was the region which experienced the greatest growth with 93 million, while Africa added 30 million new subscriptions.

Emerging markets are being increasingly targeted by mobile manufacturers as fixed broadband connections are rare. Nokia’s Asha range of feature phones is part of the Finnish manufacturer’s attempts to get the “next billion” people online.

“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,” said Douglas Gilstrap, senior vice president and head of strategy at Ericsson. “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.”

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