The number of new mobile subscriptions on the African has grown by 9 million during the first quarter of 2017 to bring the total number of mobile subscriptions on the continent to 985 million and ever closer to the 1 billion milestone, according to the latest Ericsson Mobility report.

Global figures in the report show that 107 million new mobile subscriptions were added in Q1 for a total of 7.6 billion new mobile subscriptions worldwide which represents a 4% year-on-year increase.

Nigeria, with its 3 million new mobile subscriptions, registered the 5th highest growth in subscribers around the world behind Pakistan, Indonesia, China and India (which landed in first place with 43 million).

Niklas Heuveldop, Chief Strategy Officer and Senior Vice President for Technology and Emerging Business at Ericsson says an even greater increase in the number of new mobile subscriptions can be expected over the next five years.

"Recently, the industry has taken major steps to progress network evolution, including the approval of the Non-Standalone 5G New Radio (NR) that will enable early 5G deployments. By 2022, we anticipate that there will be more than half a billion 5G subscriptions, with a population coverage of fifteen percent. Mobile broadband continues to grow strongly. On average, more than one million new mobile broadband subscribers will be added every day up to the end of 2022. The total traffic in mobile networks increased by seventy percent between the end of quarter one 2016 and the end of quarter one 2017."

The report foresees that the number of mobile broadband subscriptions in Middle East and Africa (MEA) region will almost triple between 2016 and 2022.

"In Middle East and Africa, where the penetration of mobile broadband is currently lower than in other regions, the number of mobile broadband subscriptions is expected to increase significantly. Driving factors include a growing young population and more affordable smartphones," reads an excerpt from the report.

Ericsson also forecasts that MEA will dramatically shift from a region with a majority of GSM/EDGE-only subscriptions, to a region where 80% of the subscriptions will be WCDMA/HSPA and LTE leading up to 2022.

The firm anticipates that GSM/EDGE-only subscriptions will still account for a significant share of subscriptions in this period. Further analysis by region in the report predicts that in 2022, there will be eleven times more mobile data traffic in Central and Eastern Europe and Middle East and Africa (CEMA).

Heuveldop adds that based on measurements made in hundreds of mobile networks, the Ericsson Mobility Report data illustrates the underlying growth in the industry.

He says 4G subscriptions are increasing faster than ever as Voice over LTE uptake accelerates and traffic growth reaches levels not seen since 2013.

The report anticipates that 4G will overtake GSM as the largest access technology by number of subscriptions in 2018.

"The speed with which this technology has been rolled out and adopted is unprecedented. It has taken only five years for LTE to cover 2.5 billion people, compared to eight years for WCDMA/HSPA, or 3G. In the first quarter of this year alone, 250 million new LTE subscriptions were added," the report stipulates.