Last year the number of mobile broadband subscriptions worldwide exceeded the 500 million mark – and now Ericsson says that figure will double in the next 12 months. The telecoms equipment provider expects over one billion mobile broadband connections by the end of 2011, with the greatest number – around 400 million – in the Asia Pacific region. North America and Western Europe are expected to have more than 200 million subscriptions each.
Global mobile data traffic also continues to grow rapidly, with Ericsson announcing in August 2010 that it had tripled in just one year.
Ericsson believes mobile broadband subscriptions will exceed 3.8 billion by 2015, with 95% driven by HSPA, CDMA and LTE networks.