Global 3G coverage will reach 85 percent of the world's population by 2017, according to a report from Ericsson. The 'Traffic and Market Report - On the Pulse of the Networked Society' predicts that 4G coverage will reach 50 percent of the world's population by the same date. The number of mobile subscribers is expected to reach almost by 9 billion by 2017, versus 6 billion at the end of 2011. In the first quarter of this year, some 170 million new subscribers were added, to take the total to 6.2 billion. The report also looks at the growth in mobile broadband services, estimating the number of smartphone users will reach 3 billion by 2017, versus just 700 million at end-2011. After doubling already in the past year, global mobile data traffic is expected to grow 15 times by the end of 2017. The number of mobile broadband subscribers will grow five-fold over the same period, to 5 billion in 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 Q1 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.
