5G Market Status
Omdia forecasts weaker 5G market growth in near term, 4G to remain dominant
Multiple factors have slowed down the transition to 5G such as lower handset sales driven by cost-of-living crisis and inflation, poor network coverage, low performance gain perception, and lack of 5G specific applications. Furthermore, an increasing portion of mobile connections – approximately 30% – are not handsets and will be slower to convert to 5G (e.g., IoT, connected tablets/laptops, wearables).
Omdia Senior Market Forecaster, Garinder Shankrowalia, said: “5G subscription reporting in 2022 has led us to reduce our 2023 forecast by 7.2% -approximately 150 million subscriptions. We anticipate the industry will regain this loss from 2025, once global market conditions are improved.”
Omdia believes it is important for mobile operators to continue investing in next generation mobile networks to enable the application emergence and the overall digital economy to grow. However, having multiple cellular technologies running concurrently on mobile networks is having an adverse effect on operators whereby launching 5G increases complexity and cost for little return in the short term.
Omdia Research Director Ronan de Renesse said: “There needs to be a ‘net-zero’ approach to network development, removing the old as the new gets deployed. Operators are already starting to move capital from next generation network deployment to 3G decommission projects and digital transformation. Key stakeholders should remain realistic about the prospects for 5G and re-evaluate the business case before moving on to the next step.”
Omdia forecasts 5G will account for 5.9 billion subscriptions in 2027 equivalent to a population penetration of 70.9%.
Another Opinion: 5G Fails to Deliver on Promises and Potential
5G is a big letdown and took a “back seat” at CES 2023; U.S. national spectrum policy in the works
Ookla: State of 5G Worldwide in 2022 & Countries Where 5G is Not Available
Executive Summary:
In a new blog post, Ookla asseses The State of Worldwide 5G in 2022. The market research firm examined Speedtest Intelligence® data from Q3 2022 Speedtest® results to see how 5G performance has changed since last year, where download speeds are the fastest at the country level, and how satellite technologies are offering additional options to connect. Ookla also looked at countries that don’t yet have 5G to understand where consumers are seeing improvements in 4G LTE access.
Editor’s Note: for some unknown reason, China is not included in Ookla’s report
- 5G speeds were stable at the global level with:
a] Median global 5G download speed of 168.27 Mbps in Q3 2022 as compared to 166.13 Mbps in Q3 2021
b] Median upload speed over 5G slowed slightly to 18.71 Mbps (from 21.08 Mbps) during the same period
- Ookla® 5G Map™: 127,509 5G deployments in 128 countries as of November 30, 2022, compared to 85,602 in 112 countries the year prior
- South Korea and the United Arab Emirates led countries for 5G speeds
- 5G Availability points to on-going challenges
5G Availability measures the proportion of Speedtest users with 5G-capable handsets, who spend a majority of time connected to 5G networks. It’s therefore a function of 5G coverage and adoption. We see wide disparity in 5G Availability among markets worldwide, with for example the U.S. recording 54.3% in Q3 2022, well ahead of markets such as Sweden and the U.A.E., with 8.6% and 8.3% respectively.
Critical levers for mobile operators to increase 5G Availability include:
- Increasing 5G coverage by deploying additional base stations
- Obtaining access to, or refarming, sub-GHz spectrum, to help broaden 5G coverage, as sub-GHz spectrum has superior propagation properties than that of higher frequency spectrum bands.
- Encouraging 5G adoption among users with 5G-capable handsets.
Speedtest Intelligence points to 5G adoption challenges in some markets, with 5G Availability dropping in Bulgaria, South Korea, the Netherlands, and the U.A.E. As more users acquire 5G-capable devices, operators need to balance their pricing models to ensure users have sufficient incentives to purchase a 5G tariff.
Countries where 5G is not readily available:
Speedtest Intelligence showed 29 countries in the world where more than 20% of samples were from 2G and 3G connections (combined) during Q3 2022 and met our statistical threshold to be included (down from 70 in Q3 2021). These are mostly countries where 5G is still aspirational for a majority of the population, which is being left behind technologically, having to rely on decades-old technologies that are only sufficient for basic voice and texting, social media, and navigation apps. We’re glad to see so many countries fall off this list, but having so many consumers on 2G and 3G also prevents mobile operators from making 4G and 5G networks more efficient. If operators and regulators are able to work to upgrade their users to 4G and higher, everyone will benefit.
Countries That Still Rely Heavily on 2G and 3G Connections
Speedtest IntelligenceⓇ | Q3 2021
| Country | 2G & 3G Samples |
|---|---|
| Central African Republic | 76.2% |
| Turkmenistan | 58.5% |
| Kiribati | 51.6% |
| Micronesia | 47.4% |
| Rwanda | 41.1% |
| Belarus | 39.7% |
| Equatorial Guinea | 37.7% |
| Afghanistan | 36.7% |
| Palestine | 33.5% |
| Madagascar | 27.5% |
| Sudan | 27.4% |
| Lesotho | 26.5% |
| South Sudan | 26.3% |
| Benin | 26.0% |
| Guinea | 25.5% |
| Cape Verde | 24.3% |
| Tonga | 24.3% |
| Syria | 23.4% |
| The Gambia | 23.4% |
| Ghana | 23.3% |
| Palau | 22.9% |
| Niger | 22.8% |
| Tajikistan | 22.7% |
| Mozambique | 22.4% |
| Guyana | 21.8% |
| Togo | 21.8% |
| Congo | 21.1% |
| Moldova | 20.8% |
| Saint Kitts and Nevis | 20.0% |
Conclusions:
Ookla was glad to see performance levels normalize as 5G expands to more and more countries and access improves and we are optimistic that 2023 will bring further improvements. Keep track of how well your country is performing on Ookla’s Speedtest Global Index™ or track performance in thousands of cities worldwide with the Speedtest Performance Directory™.
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