It will take more than five years for the world's operators to attract 100 million 5G customers, two years longer than it took for 4G, ABI Research forecasts.
The research firm expects the technical complexity of 5G cells and networks, as well as regulatory and other factors, to impede adoption. But adoption will start to accelerate from 2023, ABI siad.
There will be over 100 million 5G subscribers by 2025, but deployments may be concentrated in urban areas in early-adopter countries, ABI research director Philip Solis said.
“There are a number of commonalities between countries that are early builders of 5G networks. They have a large population, of which a large percentage is living in urban areas. They also have many companies pushing the envelope with IoT strategies.”
Countries including China, Japan, South Korea the US and the UK are expected to drive 5G subscriber growth.
Solis said 5G will be “a spectrum of evolution to revolution—it will be an evolution of the way the core network and network topology is transforming now, but it will be clearly delineated as a fifth generation mobile air interface on which the mobile network of the 2020’s and 2030’s will be built.”
It will use techniques including massive MIMO and 3D beamforming to meet the ever-increasing demands for mobile traffic.
Research into 5G is already well underway, through projects including SingTel's 5G R&D collaboration with Ericsson.