North America had a total of 119 million 5G connections by the end of 2022
The number of 5G subscribers at a global level is expected to reach 5.9 billion by the end of 2027, up from 1.5 billion at the end of last year, 5G Americas reported, citing data from Omdia.
Chris Pearson, president of 5G Americas said: “5G is growing remarkably and scaling faster than any other previous generation of mobile wireless. While deployments and connections are added at a significant pace, the promise of 5G will be realized by technological progress in areas like standalone architecture and network slicing for new use cases.”
Recent data from Omdia indicates 455 million global 5G connections were added in 2022. Overall, those figures represent a 14% sequential quarterly growth from 922 million in Q3 2022 to 1.05 billion in Q4 2022. Global 5G connections are forecast to continue their acceleration in 2023, approaching 2 billion by the end of the year.
The report showed that North America had a total of 119 million 5G and 507 million LTE connections by the end of Q4 2022. Overall, a total of 215 million 5G connections are projected to come from North America in 2023, bolstered by strong 5G smartphone shipments in the US.
“In North America, carriers offer 5G smartphone models at varying price points, along with smartphone promotions – including some free smartphone deals,” said Kristin Paulin, principal analyst at Omdia. This is helping to drive 5G adoption as there is wide 5G coverage in North America, making it likely to be in a 5G service area. The only other thing required is a 5G-eligible plan.”
Meanwhile, 4G LTE is expected to remain strong in Latin America and the Caribbean through the end of 2023. In Q4 2022, there were 537 million 4G LTE connections, representing 9.3% annual growth with the addition of 46 million new LTE subscriptions. Latin America and the Caribbean had a total of 12 million 5G connections by end-2022 and is expected to have 400 million 5G customers by 2027.
“5G and LTE continue to make significant progress throughout the region. Longer term, 5G has an opportunity to foster productivity and industrial development in the region,” said Jose Otero, VP of Caribbean and Latin America for 5G Americas,
Overall, the number of 5G commercial networks globally has reached 259, according to data from 5G Americas. That number is expected to reach 390 by the end of 2023 and 403 by the end of 2025.
Global 5G subscriptions had reached 1 billion at the end of 2022, according to the latest update of the Ericsson Mobility report. The report showed that some 136 million 5G subscriptions were added globally during the last quarter of 2022.
The report also stated that a total of 235 communications service providers had launched commercial 5G services globally at the end of last year, while about 35 carriers have deployed or launched 5G Standalone (SA) networks.
