Report reveals 5G enabling growing numbers of FWA service providers to offer speed-based tariff plans with 5G subscriptions forecast close to 5.6 billion by the end of 2029 and mobile data traffic expected to grow by 20% annually over the same period.
Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) continues to grow in strength as a 5G use case for communications service providers (CSPs) globally with a sharp increase over the past year in the number of CSPs offering the service.
The details, alongside Ericsson’s latest mobile industry forecasts, regional breakdowns and customer case studies, feature in the June 2024 Ericsson Mobility Report.
Of the CSPs sampled for the Ericsson study (310 globally), 241 offered FWA services as of April 2024. 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 – with downlink and uplink data parameters – similar to cable or fiber offerings.
This, the report shows, has helped to drive an almost 50% growth in the number of service providers offering 5G FWA speed-based tariffs in the past year – with 40% of all FWA CSPs now doing so. FWA is currently second only to enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) as a 5G use case.
About 300 CSPs globally now offer 5G services, of which about 50 have launched 5G Standalone (5G SA).
On subscriptions, 5G continues to grow in all regions. About 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 as a whole.
Researchers estimate that 5G subscriptions will be close to 5.6 billion by the end of 2029 – with global 5G population coverage beyond mainland China set to double from 40% at the end of 2023 to 80% 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% percent (or 430 million) of subscriptions expected to be 5G.
In India, 5G subscriptions are expected to grow from 119 million at the end of 2023 (about 10% of all mobile subscriptions in the country) to about 840 million (65% of all subscriptions) by the end of 2029.
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% on 5G low-band and 38 percent on 4G (all bands).
5G mid-band population coverage outside of mainland China has reached 35%. North America and India have made rapid deployments, topping 85% and 90% mid-band coverage respectively.
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 data-intense services, such as video.
The report forecasts mobile data traffic 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 percent by the end of 2029.
