Up until a decade or so ago, people could still get away with not having a mobile phone. Sure it was slightly difficult to stay in constant contact, a smartphone wasn’t considered absolutely essential for survival in the digital age.

Times (and technology) have drastically changed since them, and it is almost unfathomable to venture anywhere without having a mobile phone within reach. For the developed world this seems normal, but there are still many regions on the globe that don’t have access to phone services or access to a mobile phone.

This is something that the GSMA wants to change, and it predicts that over 70% of the globe’s population will have a mobile phone subscription by 2020.

GSMA Intelligence explained that over a billion people will take up a mobile subscription over the next five years, pushing the amount of people connected the mobile networks to 5.6 billion.

“Over the next five years a further one billion people will take advantage of the social and economic opportunities made possible by mobile connectivity, but we are now entering a new era that presents mobile operators with fresh opportunities and challenges,” explained Hyunmi Yang, Chief Strategy Officer at the GSMA, at this year’s Mobile World Congress.

But he was quick to add that some markets will see a slowdown in the uptake of mobile phones as some markets will reach their saturation point.

“Many economically developed regions, notably Europe and the developed markets of Asia Pacific (e.g. South Korea, Japan, Australia) have already reached extremely high levels of mobile penetration and are now at the point where future subscriber growth opportunities are limited.”

That isn’t a bad thing, as it simply means that the extra subscribers predicted will come from developing regions like Africa and India.

“The subscriber growth opportunities that will exist will largely involve connecting mainly rural, low-income populations, which may require collaboration between operators, governments and other ecosystem players to overcome the significant social and economic challenges in serving these communities.”