Ericsson report projects future of 5G in India

HIGHLIGHT

• Ericsson in an annual mobility report projected that 5G connections will account for 11 percent of total subscriptions in India by 2025.
• However, according to the report, the mass-market adoption of advanced use cases fuelled by 5G is expected later in India than in other regions.
• According to the EMR, 2G and 3G connections are expected to drop significantly.

The next-generation mobile services on 5G technology are expected to become available in India for subscription in 2022, Swedish telecom gear maker Ericsson said in a report released on Monday. The company in an annual mobility report projected that 5G connections will account for 11 percent of total subscriptions in India by 2025.

"As the transformation toward more advanced technologies continues in India, LTE is forecast to represent 80 percent of mobile subscriptions by the end of 2025. 5G subscriptions are expected to become available in 2022 and will represent 11 percent of mobile subscriptions at the end of 2025," the company said in its Ericsson Mobility Report (EMR).

The report estimates 5G to have 2.6 billion subscriptions covering up to 65 percent of the world's population and generating 45 percent of the world's total mobile data traffic by 2025.

However, according to the report, the mass-market adoption of advanced use cases fuelled by 5G is expected later in India than in other regions. "Nevertheless, the average monthly traffic per smartphone is expected to increase to around 24 GB in 2025 (in India)," the report said.

The report estimates average consumption in India, Nepal, and Bhutan per smartphone to be at 13.6 GB. The Ericsson study noted that 5G customers in South Korea at 26.6 GB are consuming approximately three times more data than 4G customers.

The Department of Telecom has received the recommendation of Trai for frequency band 3,300-3,600 Mhz band that can be used for 5G services. However, after the claim of ISRO, the DoT is learnt to have been left with 175 Mhz of radiowaves for mobile services. According to the EMR, 2G connections in the country are expected to drop to 7.3 percent by 2025 from 42 percent this year and 3G is expected to reduce to 1.3 percent in 2025 from 8.8 percent at present.

Ericsson sees the uptake of smartphones in India which will spurt data consumption in the country to 22 Exabytes (EB) by 2025. "Total traffic is projected to triple, reaching 22EB per month in 2025. This comes from two factors-- high growth in the number of smartphone users and an increase in average usage per smartphone. A total of 500 million additional smartphone users are expected in India by 2025," the report said.

The report estimates total mobile data traffic in India to be around 6.9 EB. Global total mobile data traffic is expected to reach around 38 exabytes per month by the end of the year, and is projected to grow by a factor of 4 to reach 160 exabytes per month in 2025, it added.