Ericsson has published an update of the Mobility Report, with data for the whole of 2021.
2021 closed with approx 8.2 billion SIM in the world. In the fourth quarter of 2021 alone, mobile network subscriptions increased by 24 million units.
The largest quarterly contribution comes from China (+5 million), followed by the United States (+4 million) and Pakistan (+3 million). It is now a fact that the SIMs in circulation exceed the world human population, with a penetration rate of 104%. The number of unique mobile subscribers, on the other hand, is approximately 6 billion. The gap between single users and total SIMs is largely due to the presence of multiple SIMs per person or inactive subscriptions.
The use of mobile internet also continues to grow. In the fourth quarter of 2021 the number of type subscriptions mobile broadband it increased by about 80 million, for a total of about 6.9 billion, with an increase of 6% year on year. Today 85% of mobile subscriptions are mobile broadbandi.e. they allow you to use apps and online services.
From a point of view of technology used to access the Internet on the move, we record an increase in LTE subscriptions, which in the last quarter increased by approximately 37 million, reaching a total of 4.7 billion, or 57% of all mobile subscriptions. In the same period the season tickets 5G – tied to a 5G device – they recorded an increase of 98 million, reaching 660 million worldwide. Also according to Ericsson’s new Mobility Report, they are 200 operators who have launched 5G services and at least 20 those who have implemented standalone 5G networks (SA). On the other hand, subscriptions to the HSPA (-51 million) and GSM (-52 million) networks only decreased.
The growth of mobile broadband subscriptions and the increasing consumption of video also leads to an increase in mobile data traffic which is grew by 44% between the fourth quarter of 2020 and the same period of 2021, to reach 80 Exabytes (EB). On the other hand, quarterly growth was around 8%.
