Mobile subscriptions globally are headed for growth according to the just released Ericsson Traffic and market report. The report indicates the mobile subscriptions are expected to grow by 85 percent via 3G networks by 2017 which also indicates that Africa’s mobile subscriptions have grown by more than 30 million during the first quarter of 2012

The evolution of everything  going mobile is the major contributor to this growth that is  being driven by people’s increasing demand for anywhere, anytime connectivity, the use of video, cloud-based services and the internet.

The  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 recognize this business opportunity and are aiming to facilitate this growth and provide good user experience with fast data speeds through high capacity networks.

As we speak,  around 75 per cent of the High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) networks worldwide have been upgraded to a peak speed of 7.2 Mbps or above and around 40percent has been upgraded to 21 Mbps,” said Mr 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 just700 million in 2011.

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  2012 with 39 million, followed by India with25 million. The Asia Pacific region added in total 93 million subscriptions, followed by Africa with 30 million.