5G subscriptions to top 1 billion by the end of 2022

[Shawn Knight]

In a nutshell: 5G is the fastest growing mobile communications technology ever, and the build-out is only expected to accelerate in the coming years. In its June 2022 mobility report, Ericsson said 5G population coverage reached roughly 25 percent at the end of 2021. According to the telecommunications company, 5G managed to hit this milestone about 18 months faster than 4G networks did when they first launched in 2009.

This was thanks in part to the timely launch of supported devices from multiple vendors, rapidly declining prices of 5G compatible devices compared to their early 4G counterparts and China's early 5G deployments.

Ericsson further reports that 5G subscriptions grew by 70 million during the first quarter of this year to reach 620 million worldwide. That figure is expected to surpass one billion by the end of 2022, with North America and North East Asia leading the charge.

Fifth-gen cellular networks started deploying in 2019 and had it not been for the global pandemic and associated conspiracy theories linking the two, the rollout and subsequent adoption numbers likely would have been even higher.

By the end of 2027, Ericsson believes 5G will account for 48 percent of all mobile subscriptions with 4.4 billion and become the world's dominant mobile access technology. North America is forecast to have the highest 5G penetration by that point at 90 percent.

For now, 4G networks still reign supreme. 4G subscriptions grew to around 4.9 billion during the most recent quarter and are expected to peak at about five billion before starting to taper off to make way for 5G.

Image credit: Zz, Frederik Lipfert

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https://www.techspot.com/news/95041-5g-subscriptions-top-1-billion-end-2022.html

 

[brucek]

Are there providers that offer you a choice of a "4G subscription" vs a "5G subscription"?

Where I live in the US, this not an aspect of your subscription plan. The standard you get is the one your phone + the deployed infrastructure in your area supports. Your monthly fee covers either.

Going further, there's not really even a choice of providers on this aspect. As far as I know all the majors are deploying 5G. Maybe there are brief windows where in one particular neighborhood one provider is currently 4G while another has 5G up and running, but that's a transitory thing.

 

[Hexic]

Are there providers that offer you a choice of a "4G subscription" vs a "5G subscription"?

Where I live in the US, this not an aspect of your subscription plan. The standard you get is the one your phone + the deployed infrastructure in your area supports. Your monthly fee covers either.

Going further, there's not really even a choice of providers on this aspect. As far as I know all the majors are deploying 5G. Maybe there are brief windows where in one particular neighborhood one provider is currently 4G while another has 5G up and running, but that's a transitory thing.

Pretty big swaths of Europe will be waiting a while for consistent 5G coverage. On one of my tours in 2018, traveling through England, Germany, Spain, and Italy I ran into areas that didn't offer 4G/LTE at that point yet. The US is much faster at adoption rates than most.

 

[nismo91]

Probably gonna be 1 billion already if huawei didn't get banned. where I live, we have no 5G yet. but we already had fiber (FTTH) connection for more than 7 years now.

one interesting thing about the FTTH in our region is that it is mostly using ZTE or Huawei router but also there's a few Nokia/Alcatel ones. once I called them and asked to "upgrade" my 5yo ZTE router to a nokia router because I noticed that it has more RAM. tech told me nope can't do it because it uses different protocol so it is non-interchangeable.

so if I were to venture a guess, if huawei didn't get banned they could've come up with cheaper 5G solution that we could probably afford now. no worries though I don't live in a very dense neighborhood so I still get a respectable 40mbit speed on LTE in many places.

 

[hahahanoobs]

Are there providers that offer you a choice of a "4G subscription" vs a "5G subscription"?

Where I live in the US, this not an aspect of your subscription plan. The standard you get is the one your phone + the deployed infrastructure in your area supports. Your monthly fee covers either.

Going further, there's not really even a choice of providers on this aspect. As far as I know all the majors are deploying 5G. Maybe there are brief windows where in one particular neighborhood one provider is currently 4G while another has 5G up and running, but that's a transitory thing.

You want to know how they got those percentages?

 

[Uncle Al]

Hmmmmm .... so what is the upper limit of subscriptions that 5G can handle? Does it even matter? When is 6,7,8,9G going to arrive?