Ericsson has again revised its forecast of global 5G adoption over the next 5 years and is now predicting some 1.9 billion subscriptions by 2024, up from 1.5 billion in its previous report. The company expects the technology to be available to more than 45 percent of the world's population in 5 years’ time, a figure that could surge to 65 percent as spectrum sharing technology enables 5G deployments on LTE frequency bands. Service providers in several markets have already switched on 5G following the launch of 5G-compatible smartphones and are setting more ambitious targets for population coverage of up to 90 percent within the first year, said Ericsson in the latest of its semi-annual mobility reports.
North America and northeast Asia are set to lead 5G uptake, with the report predicting that 63 percent of North American mobile subscriptions will be for 5G service by 2024, followed by 47 percent in Northeast Asia and 40 percent in Western Europe. All other countries and regions including Central and Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia and Oceania, Latin America, India and the Middle East and Africa will still be mainly using 3G and 4G in 2024 and are unlikely to reach even 20 percent 5G coverage, said the report.
Global mobile data traffic, meanwhile, grew 82 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2019 and is expected to reach 131 exabytes (EB) per month by the end of 2024, at which time 35 percent is projected to be over 5G networks. There are now over 1 billion cellular IoT connections globally, a figure that’s set to rise to 4.1 billion by the end of 2024, of which 45 percent are represented by Massive IoT.
