telecommunications
Study: 5G will reach two billion people by the end of 2021
No cellular technology has caught on in the market as quickly as 5G. Photo: Bernat Armangue / AP / dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
When switching to the fifth generation of mobile communications, users in North America and China are in the front row. But more and more people in Western Europe want to use the technical advantages of 5G.
No cellular technology has caught on in the market as quickly as 5G. This emerges from the latest Ericsson Mobility Report, which was published in Stockholm on Tuesday.
According to the study, super-fast 5G mobile communications will be used by more than two billion people worldwide who have a 5G contract by the end of the year. That is twice as many as a year ago.
According to the study, 5G will account for around 50 percent of all mobile phone subscriptions worldwide in five years. In North America, the 5G quota for contracts will even increase from the current 20 percent to 90 percent by 2027. For Western Europe, the Swedish network supplier predicts a 5G share of 83 percent of all mobile phone contracts by 2027, although the 5G quota here is currently only six percent. The 5G quota is lowest among contracts in the region of “Sub-Saharan Africa” with ten percent and “Middle East / North Africa” with 25 percent by 2027.
Falling prices encourage the boom
Ericsson sees the falling prices for 5G smartphones as the main reason for the 5G boom. Smartphones that support the fifth generation of mobile communications are available in Germany for as little as 200 euros or less. In the past few months, sales could have been even stronger if supply chain bottlenecks had not led to a shortage of chips.
The fifth generation of mobile communications (5G) offers significantly higher data transmission rates than the previous UMTS (3G) and LTE (4G) standards. In addition, the delay times (latency) are lower, so that 5G can also be used for real-time applications such as controlling a machine remotely or telemedicine applications. In some regions, 3G networks (UMTS) are being switched off in order to free up frequencies for 5G. In five years there will be virtually no new UMTS contracts.
The report documents an exponential growth in mobile data traffic due to the increased 5G spread. In the third quarter of 2021, data traffic in the cellular network rose by 42 percent year-on-year to around 78 exabytes (EB). This also includes the data traffic through so-called Fixed Wireless Access Services (FWA). This refers to the connection of households, schools, companies and other facilities with mobile radio technology as a replacement for missing landline connections. All mobile data traffic in the cellular network will increase by a factor of five to an expected 370 exabytes by the end of 2027. One exabyte is equal to one million terabytes.