Ericsson released its biannual mobility report last week. It forecasts strong growth over the coming decade, with 5G projected to cover 20 percent of the world’s population and 1 billion subscriptions by 2023. LTE subscriptions are expected to grow as well, more than doubling from 2.6 billion subscriptions in 2017 to nearly 5.5 billion in 2023.
Coinciding with 5G’s rollout, the report projects a sharp increase in data usage. Total mobile data traffic will increase eight-fold by 2023, to around 110 exabytes. Smartphones – which currently account for 85 percent of that traffic – will grow to 95 percent of total traffic during that time frame.
This growth will be driven by Northeast Asia and North America, which currently use the most data globally. Data traffic per smartphone in North America will grow exponentially, from 5.2 GB to 48 GB. Rapidly developing India and the Middle East also appear poised for massive growth.
The report is bullish on the rollout of higher order carrier aggregation, 4×4 MIMO and 256 QAM on the road to gigabit speeds and, ultimately, 5G. There are 14 gigabit LTE networks currently. T-Mobile and AT&T in recent weeks announced they would beef up and expand their LTE networks.
The report envisions many possibilities for 5G. Among them: 4K/8K videos, augmented reality and virtual reality, autonomous vehicle control and remote robotic surgery.
