More mobile devices than people ‘within five years’
In October 2011 Defra announced £150 million to improve mobile coverage in rural areas -this article explains why that is so important and why in terms of our focus on broadband we may have been taking our eye off the ball in terms or rural communities as business environments
The number of devices connected to mobile phone networks will overtake the number of people on Earth within five years, according to the technology group Ericsson.
There will be 9bn mobile subscriptions by 2017, up from 6.2bn at the start of this year, while the US census bureau predicts the global population will have reached 7.4 billion in five years.
Driven by demand for video, internet usage and storage of electronic files in the “cloud” rather than on home or office computers, traffic over mobile networks will grow even faster than subscriptions.