Ericsson said in an update to the Ericsson Mobility Report published in June that global mobile subscription reached 8.3 billion on June 30, 2022, with 6.1 billion unique mobile subscribers, while the number of 5G subscriptions worldwide grew by 70 million during the second quarter to reach 690 million.
The reported attributed that the difference between the number of mobile subscriptions and subscriber to inactive subscriptions, multiple device ownership and/or the optimisation of subscriptions for different call types.
In Ghana for instance, there are over 42 million mobile subscriptions belong to an estimated 20 million unique subscriber due to the same reasons cited in the Ericsson report.
According to the report, global mobile subscription penetration was 106 percent in the second quarter. China accounted for the most net additions at 10 million to 1.70 billion mobile subscriptions, followed by India with 7 million additions to 1.09 billion and Indonesia with 4 million net additions.
APAC gained 17 million subscriptions and reached 1.69 billion by 30 June. Africa added 7 million mobile subscriptions in Q2 and reached 1.20 billion. Latin America gained 4 million and finished the period with 705 million subscriptions. Central & Eastern Europe was up 2 million to 570 million mobile subscriptions and Western Europe also up 2 million, to 545 million subscriptions. North America added 2 million mobile subscriptions in Q2 to 400 million.
Mobile broadband accounted for about 86 percent of all mobile subscriptions in Q2, Ericsson said. The number of mobile broadband subscriptions grew by about 100 million in the quarter to reach 7.2 billion, a year-on-year increase of 6 percent.
Mobile network data traffic grew by 39 percent between Q2 2021 and Q2 2022. Total monthly global mobile network data traffic reached 100 EB (exabytes).
By the end of the second quarter, 218 communications service providers had launched commercial 5G services, said Ericsson. Twenty-four providers had started 5G standalone (SA) networks.
Ericsson said 4G subscriptions increased by 77 million to around 5 billion in the second quarter, representing 60 percent of all mobile subscriptions, while WCDMA/HSPA subscriptions declined by 41 million. GSM/EDGE-only subscriptions dropped by 48 million during the second quarter, and other technologies decreased by about 6 million.
