5G is the fastest growing wireless cellular technology and will exceed 4G LTE by more than 2.5 billion connections in 2028, according to a 5G forecast from 5G Americas and Omdia.
During the past six months, 331 million 5G connections have been added. This brings the worldwide total to 1.4 billion. There will be nearly 2 billion connections by the end of this year and more than 8 billion by 2028.
North America is leading the charge, according to the organization. By the close of the second quarter of this year, the region had 151 million 5G connection and 496 million LTE connections. The 5G penetration rate is 40%. The growth rate was 25.5% during the first half of the year. Omdia projects that there will be 669 million 5G connections by 2028.
The two organizations, which also worked with TeleGeography on the assessments, said that there are 287 commercial 5G networks worldwide. As of mid-September, there were 17 in North America and 29 in Latin American and the Caribbean. The researchers said that there were 707 4G LTE networks globally, with 17 in North America and 31 in Latin America and the Caribbean.
5G Americas and Omdia project that there will be 425 5G networks worldwide by 2025.
“The phenomenal global growth of 5G connections underscores the insatiable demand for advanced connectivity,” 5G Americas’ President Chris Pearson said in a press release about the 5G forecast. “With 1.4 billion connections and counting, we are witnessing the transformative power of 5G technology as the industry focuses on integrating 5G connectivity into new devices and services in this era of innovation.”
Last December, 5G Americas said that there were 922 million 5G connections globally as of the end of the third quarter of 2022 and projected that there would be 1.1 billion by the end of that year. The organization at that point predicted that there would be 5.9 billion 5G connections by the end of 2027.
