For many people around the world, the mobile phone will be the only means of accessing the internet. According to Ericsson’s second Traffic and Market Report – On the Pulse of the Networked Society – 85% of the world’s population will have internet coverage via 3G by 2017 and there will be close to 9-billion mobile subscriptions, compared to 6-billion by the end of 2011. Machine-to-machine subscriptions will add to this figure.

Mobile broadband subscriptions, meanwhile, are forecast to reach 5-billion in 2017, compared to 1-billion by the end of 2011.

Douglas Gilstrap, senior vice president and head of strategy for Ericsson says: “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. 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. Today, around 75% of the HSPA networks worldwide have been upgraded to a peak speed of 7.2 Mbps or above and around 40% has been upgraded to 21 Mbps.”

In the report, Ericsson also predicts that by 2017, half of the world’s population will be covered by LTE/4G networks. Smartphone subscriptions will number around 3- billion in 2017 – compared to 700-million in 2011.

Total mobile data traffic continues to increase – between quarter one in 2011 and quarter one in 2012, data traffic doubled with the prime driver being video. Smartphones are also, and will remain, a key data traffic driver. The 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 quarter one of 2012 with 39-million, followed by India with 25-million. The Asia Pacific region added in total 93-million subscriptions, followed by Africa with 30-million.

The main continuous trend identified in the report is that everything is going mobile, an evolution which is mainly being driven by people’s increasing demand for anywhere, anytime connectivity and the use of video, cloud-based services and the internet.