Ericsson president and ceo Hans Vestberg has highlighted how the rapid increases in subscribers and data usage is impacting the entire ICT industry.

He believes that network quality, user experience, billing and charging models and services offerings all need to be adapted to the rapid development.

"In 2008, there were four billion mobile subscriptions. By 2017 there will be close to nine billion. With this kind of mobility and connectivity everywhere, there will be no differentiation between a business user and a private user,” he explains. "Our business is to make sure that networks are built and designed to handle not just traffic growth, but the complexities in the different devices and different kind of traffic going across mobile networks today.

A recent report from the company revealed that by 2017, 85 per cent of the world's population will have 3G coverage and that 170 million new subscribers were added to mobile networks in the first quarter 2012. Vestberg says ICT is already addressing some of the greatest challenges of our time, such as urbanisation, the environment and our use of natural resources. With global coverage, ICT will be a fundamental lever of transformation and progress in the future.

"This is going to place new requirements on our current business, but also open up opportunities beyond our imagination. The key players of the Networked Society will be those who rethink and reinvent themselves in order to enter into this new ecosystem," he says.