The penetration rate reaches 104% and the number of unique mobile subscribers amounts to 6 billion. In the last months of 2021, subscriptions to broadband increased by 80 million, for a total of 6.9 billion, with an annual increase of 6%. Geographically, in the last quarter, China is the area with the best performance (+5 million) followed by the United States (+4 million) and Pakistan (+3 million) 22 Feb 2022 Domenico Aliperto
In 2021, there were approximately 8.2 billion SIMs active in the world. Of these, 660 million are enabled to use 5G services. To say this is the latest update of Ericsson's Mobility Report, which precisely describes the dynamics of the past year: in the fourth quarter alone, subscriptions to the mobile network grew by 24 million units. The report underlines that the Sims in circulation now 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 unique users and total Sims is largely due to the presence of multiple Sims per person or inactive subscriptions. Geographically, the growth in the fourth quarter of 2021 was driven by the performances of China (+5 million), the United States (+4 million) and Pakistan (+3 million). Mobile Internet and 5G subscriptions on the rise At the same time, the use of the Internet from mobile continues to increase. In the last months of 2021, the number of mobile broadband subscriptions grew 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 of the mobile broadband type, meaning they allow you to use apps and online services. From the point of view of the technology used to access the Internet on the move, Ericsson records a growth in LTE subscriptions, which in the last quarter increased by about 37 million, reaching a total of 4.7 billion, or 57% of all. mobile subscriptions. In the same period, 5G subscriptions recorded a growth of 98 million units, reaching 660 million worldwide. 200 operators have launched 5G services and at least 20 have implemented standalone 5G networks. On the other hand, subscriptions to the Hspa (-51 million) and GSM (-52 million) networks only decreased. The growth in mobile broadband subscriptions and the ever-increasing consumption of video also leads to an increase in mobile data traffic which grew by 44% between the fourth quarter of 2020 and the same period of 2021, to reach 80 Exabytes. The quarterly growth was instead about 8%.