Monday, September 21, 2026
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Telecom Tweets of the Week: Hitting the big time

by Kelly Hill
written by Kelly Hill Share
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According to the GSMA, worldwide mobile subscriber numbers have hit 5 billion. That’s just actual users — the GSMA says that mobile connections are actually at 7.7 billion. And those figures don’t include machine-to-machine connections like all those connected cows.

As Mike Quindazzi, managing director at PwC noted, most of the future growth in subscriber numbers is predicted to come from China and India.

For its part, Ericsson predicts in its new mobility report that an additional 1 million new mobile broadband subscribers will be added per day for the next six years. The report also forecasts that worldwide smartphone subscriptions will almost double during the next six years, growing from 3.9 billion in 2016 to 6.8 billion by 2022. When tablets and feature phones are included, total mobile subscriptions are growing at around 4% year-on-year, reaching 7.6 billion in the first quarter.

https://twitter.com/Ericssonsustain/status/875731877830815745

All those users means a heck of a lot of data. Some interesting research covered by Forbes: 7 out of 10 mobile apps share your data with third parties.

Given that mobile users spend, on average, five hours a day on their phones and the amount of time spent in apps is up 69% year-over-year (Flurry Mobile numbers), that’s a lot of data being shared.

Speaking of a lot of data, BGR spills the beans on a work-around to get unlimited Verizon hot spot data for $50 per month:

What’s that I see? A new Verizon flip phone? I thought that someone must’ve mistaken #TBT for Friday, but nope. Verizon is now selling the LG Exalt LTE for $168 (retail price) — and as Android Life notes, this is an LTE-only device. No 3G fallback. It’s an LTE, LTE, LTE, LTE world.

 

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Kelly Hill reports on network test and measurement, AI infrastructure and regulatory issues, including spectrum, for RCR Wireless News. She began covering the wireless industry in 2005, focusing on carriers and MVNOs, then took a few years’ hiatus and returned to RCR Wireless News to write about heterogeneous networks (remember those?) and network infrastructure. Kelly is an Ohio native with a masters degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, where she focused on science writing and multimedia. She has written for the San Francisco Chronicle, The Oregonian and The Canton Repository. She lives in northern Virginia, not far from Data Center Alley.

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