5G subscription to cross 190 million globally by end of 2020: Report

New Delhi: The number of 5G subscriptions will cross 190 million globally by the end of 2020 and 2.8 billion by the end of 2025, a report by Swedish telecom gear maker Ericsson said.

“The spread of COVID-19 during the first part of 2020 impacted all parts of society globally, including the telecommunications sector. Despite the uncertainty caused by the pandemic, service providers continued to switch on 5G, and more than 75 of them have now announced commercial 5G service launches. We have increased our estimate for the number of 5G subscriptions, and now forecast about 190 million by the end of 2020,” Ericsson Mobility Report said.

“By the end of 2025, we forecast 2.8 billion 5G subscriptions globally, accounting for around 30 percent of all mobile subscriptions at that time,” the report further said.

The report noted that LTE will remain the dominant mobile access technology by subscription during the forecast period. It is projected to peak in 2022 at 5.1 billion subscriptions and decline to around 4.4 billion subscriptions by the end of 2025 as more subscribers migrate to 5G.

In 2025, 88 percent of subscriptions are projected to be for mobile broadband.

“Today, there are around 8 billion mobile subscriptions. We estimate that this figure will increase to 8.9 billion by the end of 2025, out of which 88 percent will be for mobile broadband,” it said.

The number of unique mobile subscribers is projected to reach 6.3 billion by the end of the forecast period. Smartphone penetration continues to rise, the report said.

Subscriptions associated with smartphones account for about 70 percent of all mobile phone subscriptions. There were 5.5 billion smartphone subscriptions at the end of 2019. The number of smartphone subscriptions is forecast to reach 7.5 billion in 2025, which accounts for around 85 percent of all mobile subscriptions.

Subscriptions for fixed broadband are expected to show limited growth of around 4 percent per year through 2025.4 Subscriptions for mobile PCs and tablets are expected to show moderate growth, reaching around 390 million in 2025.