India ranked as fasting-growing 5G market – Ericsson

India remains one of the highlights of the latest Ericsson Mobility Report as local operators plow ahead with "massive" deployments of 5G networks. Indeed, the June 2023 edition of the report describes India as the fastest-growing 5G market globally as it seeks to realize its "Digital India" vision.

In November, Ericsson analysts were already forced to upgrade their forecast for fixed wireless access (FWA) connections because of Reliance Jio's plan to serve 100 million homes with 5G FWA services.

Now they say that 5G subscriptions in India already reached 10 million by the end of 2022, even though 5G services were only launched there in October. The forecast now is that 5G subscriptions in India are expected to reach 700 million and account for 57% of mobile subscriptions in the region by the end of 2028.

At a global level, the 5G subscription forecast has been adjusted to take into account delayed spectrum auctions in several countries and continued difficult macroeconomic conditions, the report says. 5G subscriptions are now forecast to reach 4.6 billion globally by the end of 2028, accounting for over 50% of all mobile subscriptions. That's up from more than 1 billion subscribers currently, with 1.5 billion forecast for the end of 2023.

5G SA rollouts still low; FWA still popular

The less than inspiring news is that although about 240 service providers have now launched commercial 5G services around the world, only 35 have deployed 5G standalone (SA) networks. Ericsson notes that as non-standalone (NSA) and SA support can coexist in a network, and SA-capable devices retain support for the NSA mode of 5G, many SA deployments are carried out in a stepwise fashion.

Overall, Ericsson said service providers continue to deploy 5G despite a weaker global economy and geopolitical uncertainties. The most common consumer 5G services are enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), FWA, gaming and some AR/VR-based services.

At the same time, the analysts warn that 5G rollout is still very much a work in progress, and the deployment of 5G mid-band spectrum remains limited to around 25% of 4G sites globally, with North America ahead and Europe behind.

In terms of FWA, about 40% of FWA service providers, over 100 in total, are offering it over 5G. North America and Western Europe have the highest regional adoption with close to 70% of FWA service providers offering it over 5G, the report says.

Ericsson continues to predict that FWA connections will rise to over 300 million by 2028, up from 100 million at the end of 2022. Of the 300 million projected connections, nearly 80% are expected to be over 5G, while almost half of global FWA connections will be in Asia-Pacific by 2028.

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— Anne Morris, contributing editor, special to Light Reading