Pre-standards 5G network investments will account for $250 million in 2017, says SNS Research report.
The 5G network infrastructure market spending will grow at nearly 70 percent CAGR between 2019 and 2025, accounting for $28 billion in annual spending by the end of 2025.
Telecom equipment and software makers such as Ericsson, Nokia, Huawei and ZTE are aiming for 5G infrastructure market share in coming years.
The Unites States and South Korea are making early investments in pre-standards 5G trial networks. Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint are the major wireless operators in the U.S. Main mobile service providers in South Korea are SK Telecom and KT Corporation.
Last week, research agency Ovum and telecom industry association 5G Americas said North America will have 11 million 5G connections in 2021 – accounting for 44 percent of all global 5G connections. At the same time, North America will have 452 million LTE connections including M2M at the end of 2021.
SNS Research said early adopters across the globe will simultaneously begin commercializing 5G services in 2019 following completion of the 3GPP’s first phase of 5G specifications in March 2018.
Though early 5G R&D investments have primarily targeted the radio access segment, network-slicing has recently emerged as necessary “end-to-end” capability to guarantee performance for different 5G applications which may have contrasting requirements.
5G networks are expected to utilize a variety of frequency bands ranging from established sub-6 GHz cellular bands to millimeter wave spectrum to support diverse usage scenarios, according to James Bennett, director at SNS Research.
ABI Research said there will be 4 billion LTE subscribers in 2022 from 2 billion 4G LTE subscribers in early 2017. LTE networks will be the backbone of broadband connectivity for many years to come; Gigabit LTE provides a major improvement and lays the foundation for 5G.
LTE carries 67 percent of total mobile traffic, increasing to 82 percent during 2022, while 5G will carry 13 percent of total mobile data. The ARPU in the U.S. is approximately $43 and will decrease to less than $35 in 2022. Network operator Capex will continue to decrease until 2019, after which 5G deployments will ramp up.
Baburajan K
editor@telecomlead.com
