By Prince Osuagwu
Perhaps what Nigeria lacks in world politics, it gained in world telecommunications standing. This is as the country last week contributed greatly to jerking world mobile subscription above 5 million mark from the 4 million mark it pitched at the end of the last quarter of 2008.

Cell Phone

Although  the country shared the glory of this communications milestone with other counterparts in the emerging markets, like China, India and Zimbabwe, world renowned telecom equipment vendors, Ericsson which gathered the information and made available to Vanguard Hi-Tech, did not mince words in adding that the main drivers of growth continues to be Africa, which growth parameters, of course, rests on the telecom exploits of Nigeria.

According to Ericsson, the 5 billionth subscription was added last week Thursday. It means that about 2 million subscribers were added on daily basis, globally. The main drivers of growth continue to be Africa and the Asia-Pacific region, which together accounted for 80 percent of global subscription net additions in the first half of 2010.

Ericsson however stated that its estimates was based on industry information. Today there are 450 million mobile subscriptions in Africa as compared to the year 2000, when there were about 16 million subscriptions, less than the amount of users in Ghana today.

Ericsson estimates also provided that  mobile broadband subscriptions were growing at a similar pace and are expected to amount to more than 3.4 billion by the year 2015 from the 360 million in 2009.

Interestingly, it was also estimated that over a 100 million of the addition would spring from sub-Saharan Africa, where studies have shown that over 80 percent of all people accessing the internet are doing so using their mobile device.

This mobile internet fever coming from Africa, according to Ericsson, would very soon, also affect 80 percent of people accessing the net world over.

Today, mobile subscription has provided different options to different people. For some it is a question of convenience, for others it is a necessity. Mobile subscriptions today allow people who do not have access to a bank or a bank account to transfer money.

It enables fishermen and farmers to get quick updates on sudden changes in the weather forecast. It assists villagers to easy local medical care, and aid children to easy access to online education.

It facilitates daily operations of small businesses and drives economic growth. World class organisations have plugged in on the advantages of mobile subscription to provide tailor made services and ubiquitous service platforms that endear them in the hearts of many.
For instance, the joint venture between Sony Ericsson and ST Ericsson, is lauded for helping people access new services, enrich individual’s Internet, multimedia and user experience through innovations in device design, multimedia platforms, smartmobility and entertainment.
In more mature markets, connected devices rather than people, are driving the increase in network traffic, but Ericsson says its projections favours a 50 billion connections by 2020.

Its conviction was based on the rapid changing of the communication landscape which saw in December 2009, a milestone achievement when the amount of data traffic carried over mobile networks exceeded the amount of traffic generated from voice calls.

It saw Machine-to-machine, M2M communications, as a key component in the future growth of the mobile industry.  This would enhance medical applications, including remote medical diagnostics which would facilitate the collection, monitoring, and analysis of patient data from rural and/or isolated locations.

For energy companies it could be smart meters that read themselves, increase business efficiency and cut operational expenses. In transportation, tracking solutions improve route optimization and safety for vehicles on the road and even digital signs that can be updated remotely, cameras that can send pictures halfway around the world are other examples that machine-to-machine technology make possible, Ericsson noted.