4G will continue to dominate global connects in 2025: GSMA

Despite indications deployment of 5G is being accelerated, a report from GSMA says 4G connections will still dwarf those of 5G into 2025. The Mobile Economy 2018 report, released Tuesday, noted that two-thirds of mobile connections globally, excluding cellular Internet of Things (IOT), will be running on both 4G and 5G networks by 2025, though 4G will continue to make up the bulk. Despite 5G continuing to make headway, it will only make up a projected 14 per cent of the world’s mobile connections by 2025, or 1.2 billion, while the older generation technology will make up 53 per cent by then, up from 29 per cent in 2017. The report follows a Reuters story that cited Nokia Corp. boss Rajeev Suri, who suggested global telecoms are closer to adopting 5G networks by a year than previous expectations. Last year, AT&T Inc. also pushed the initial 5G rollout projection by a year following approval by the wireless standards body 3GPP. But The Wire Report previously reported on how unexpected advances in 4G, especially in speed, were slowing demand for 5G. This is despite experts suggesting 5G will bring latency — the time it takes information to travel between systems — to a fraction of where it is now. However, GSMA’s projections are still higher than a Cisco System Inc. report from last year that pegged 5G connections by 2021 at 0.2 per cent of all connections. The United States, China and Japan will be the leading countries by 5G connections in 2025, the GSMA report noted. Together with Europe, the four economies will generate 70 per cent of the 5G connections by 2025. Last year, GSMA projected 100 million 5G connections in North America by 2023. The report also highlighted other projections. Global cellular and non-cellular IoT connections will increase more than three times between last year and 2025 to reach 25 billion. The largest source of connections growth in that time will be in the industrial IoT segment — critical infrastructure and smart cities projects, for example — the report noted, despite the field being in its infancy. Other trends include the evolution of video technology — 4K, 8K, 3D video, 360-degree video, augmented and virtual reality — which will drive 75 per cent of global mobile data traffic by 2023, the report said.

4G will continue to dominate global connects in 2025: GSMA

Brief | February 28, 2018

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4G will continue to dominate global connects in 2025: GSMA

Brief | February 28, 2018

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