Nigeria grew its mobile subscriptions by three million in the first quarter of 2017, the 12th Ericsson Mobility Report has shown.

The Managing Director, Ericsson Nigeria, Mr Rutger Reman, while presenting the report in Lagos on Thursday, said that globally, there were 107 million new mobile subscriptions added in the quarter.

Reman said that Africa added nine million mobile subscriptions, of which Nigeria accounted for three million in the first quarter.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Africa has a total of 985 million mobile subscriptions in the quarter.

He said that the global mobile subscriptions were growing at four per cent year-on-year, reaching a total of 7.6 billion in the first quarter.

He said that with the three million new subscriptions, Nigeria was among the top five countries by net additions in first quarter.

According to him, India grew the most in terms of net additions, during the quarter with 43 million subscriptions.

“This was followed by China with new 24 million subscriptions, Indonesia added 10 million, Pakistan with five million, while Nigeria had additional three million mobile subscriptions.

“The strong subscription growth in India was mainly due to an attractive Long Term Evolution (LTE) welcome offer by one operator with free voice and data.

“The number of mobile subscriptions exceeds the population in many countries, which is largely due to inactive subscriptions, multiple device ownership or optimisation of subscriptions for different types of calls.

“As a result, the number of subscribers is lower than the number of subscriptions. Today there are around 5.2 billion subscribers globally compared to 7.6 billion subscriptions.”

Reman said that the mobile subscription which stood at 7.5 billion in 2016 was expected to reach nine billion in the year 2022.

Mr Niklas Heuveldop, the Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Technology and Emerging Business, Ericsson, said that the number of mobile subscriptions would continue to grow across the regions, fueled by a strong uptake in mobile broadband.

Heuveldop said that the mobile broadband subscriptions were expected to reach 8.3 billion in 2022.

He said that mobile broadband subscriptions were growing by around 25 per cent year-on-year, increasing by approximately 240 million in first quarter 2017 alone.

According to him, the total number of mobile broadband subscriptions is now around 4.6 billion.

“2.6 billion new mobile broadband subscribers will be added through 2022, averaging to more than one million each day.

“Mobile broadband will account for more than 90 per cent of subscriptions by 2022 as it is anticipated that by the end of 2022, there will be nine billion mobile subscriptions.

“Mobile broadband subscriptions will reach 8.3 billion, thereby accounting for more than 90 per cent of all mobile subscriptions.” (NAN)

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