INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Mobile Technology
5G driving change in service providers ’ FWA strategies
Ericsson figures forecast North America as having the highest penetration by the end of 2029 – with 90 % of subscriptions expected to be 5G .
FWA continues to grow in strength as a 5G use case for CSPs globally – with a sharp increase over the past year in the number of CSPs offering the service .
Of the CSPs sampled by Ericsson ( 310 globally ), 241 offered FWA services as of April 2024 .
Ericsson Mobility Report researchers found that , of these , 128 – about 53 % included a 5G FWA offering . This is a twelve-point increase on the corresponding period in 2023 – a growth of 29 %.
The speed , data handling and low latency capabilities of 5G FWA also increase the attractiveness of speed-based FWA tariff plans to CSPs . This has helped drive an almost 50 % growth in the number of service providers offering 5G FWA speed-based tariffs in the past year – with 40 percent of all FWA CSPs now doing so . FWA is currently second only to eMBB as a 5G use case .
On subscriptions , the research shows 5G continues to grow in all regions with around 160 million 5G subscriptions were added globally in the first three months of 2024 – bringing the total to more than 1.7 billion .
Almost 600 million new subscriptions are expected in 2024 with researchers estimating that 5G subscriptions will be close to 5.6 billion by the end of 2029 .
5G is expected to account for about 60 % of all mobile subscriptions by the end of 2029 . Regionally , North America is forecast to have the highest penetration by the end of 2029 – with 90 % ( or 430 million ) of subscriptions expected to be 5G .
On user experience , statistics from a leading service provider reveal 97 % of all user activities on 5G mid-band achieved a time-to-content of less than 1.5 seconds – compared to 67 percent on 5G low-band and 38 percent on 4G ( all bands ).
North America is recognised in the research for rapid deployment – topping 85 % midband coverage respectively .
Year-on-year mobile network data traffic has been adjusted downwards by Ericsson researchers due to changes in the underlying data , such as lower numbers reported by regulators and service providers in populous markets for the second half of 2023 .
The research shows mobile network data traffic grew 25 % year-on-year between the end of March 2023 and the end of March 2024 – driven primarily by subscriber migration to later generations and dataintense services , such as video .
Mobile data traffic is forecast to grow with a compound annual growth rate of about 20 % through the end of 2029 .
About a quarter of all mobile network data was handled by 5G by the end of 2023 . This is forecast to grow to about 75 % by the end of 2029 . p
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