Telecom Lead Asia: Mobile industry will invest $1.1 trillion in capital expenditure (Capex) during 2013-17.
In the next 5 years, mobile industry will contribute $2.6 trillion to public funding.
In 2017, companies across the ecosystem will employ nearly 10 million people globally, according to a study by the GSMA and A.T. Kearney.
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With the number of mobile subscribers standing at 3.2 billion people, nearly half of the world’s population now uses mobile communications.
It is expected that a further 700 million subscribers will be added by 2017 and the 4 billion-subscriber milestone will be reached in 2018.
According to Anne Bouverot, director general, GSMA, the total mobile ecosystem revenues were US$1.6 trillion, or 2.2 per cent of global GDP.
At the end of 2012, there were 6.8 billion mobile connections worldwide, a figure expected to grow to 9.7 billion by the end of 2017.
Mobile broadband accounted for 1.6 billion of these connections in 2012, increasing to 5.1 billion in 2017, including 920 million LTE connections, said Mark Page, leader of A.T. Kearney’s Communications, Media and Technology practice.
The proliferation of mobile broadband is enabling an explosion in data traffic and in 2012 as 0.9 exabytes of data traversed mobile networks every month; this will increase by 66 per cent to 11.2 exabytes per month in 2017. The rate of growth is best illustrated by the fact that total traffic volumes in 2012 were as high as all prior years combined.
