The telecoms industry is on track to attract more than 1 million new mobile internet subscribers per day between now and 2022, according to the latest Ericsson Mobility Report.
The report predicts that there will be 2.6 billion new mobile broadband subscribers added through 2022, with LTE set to become the dominant access technology in 2018, making it the fastest growing mobile technology in history.
Ericsson noted that it has taken just five years for LTE to cover 2.5 billion people, compared to eight years for 3G. There were 250 million new LTE subscriptions added in the first quarter of 2017 alone.
Total traffic over mobile networks meanwhile grew 70% over the 12 months ending in Q1 – the fastest year-on-year mobile data growth globally since 2013 – and is set to increase to eight times its current level by 2022, the report predicts. Recent growth has been driven by explosive increases in consumption in India.
Global growth in demand for mobile data will also drive 5G deployment. The report predicts that there will be more than 500 million 5G subscriptions globally by 2022, not including IoT connections. By this time, 5G is expected to cover around 15% of the world’s population.