ericsson has updated its annual Mobility Report with data that Subscriptions to 5G plans approach 700 million worldwide. Specifically, the operator points out that at the end of the second quarter of this year there were already 690 million active subscriptions. Of these, 60 million were activated between April and June 2022. In total, the company indicates that subscriptions to subscription plans for all mobile technologies is 8.3 billion, of which 6.1 billion are unique users.
These data show that this technology is still quite far from being dominant in the world of mobile telephony, although it can give an idea of its rate of adoption. According to Ericsson, which expects 5G subscriptions to reach 1 billion by the end of 2022, this technology is scaling faster than any previous generation of mobile technology. Currently, a quarter of the world’s population already has access to it, and it is expected that by 2027 three-quarters of the population will be able to access 5G.
So far there are 218 mobile operators that have launched commercial 5G services. Of these, 24 have deployed independent 5G networks (5G SA). While all commercial 5G networks use new radio technologies, only the 5G SA infrastructure employs a cloud-based core that delivers the level of throughput and latency needed to run the most advanced and game-changing applications.
In general, the mobile data traffic has registered in the second quarter of the year a year-on-year increase of 39%. The amount of data consumed each month has also grown to 100 exabytes. As for predictions for the future, the company points out that in five years, 5G will account for 90% of all mobile subscriptions in North America, 82% of those in Western Europe and 74% of those in Northeast Asia.
