Latin America will close the year 2022 with 19 million 5G subscriptions, outlines Ericsson

Latin America will close the year 2022 with around 19 million subscriptions to communication services with 5G technology, this after around ten countries in the region began to market products and services of this type in the year, Ericsson said.

According to the latest version of the Mobility Report, the forecast is that by 2028 there will be a park of 400 million 5G mobile subscriptions in the region, while globally the total number of subscribers would stand at 1,000 million at the close of te years and 4.9 billion by 2028.

Another of the changes that the company highlighted is the amount of mobile data consumed in Latin America, since it is expected that by 2028 data traffic per smartphone in the region will be 41GB per month, an increase of 25% compared to 10.5GB. consumed on average at the end of 2022. Worldwide data consumption will grow 21% between 2022 and 2028, and users will go from consuming 15GB to 46GB in the same period.

5G is already a reality on all continents and providers around the world have opted for various forms of deployment depending on local factors. 5G coverage already covers 25% of the population worldwide, and in leading markets such as the United States they have 80% coverage.

Our outlook for 2028 is for 5G subscriptions to exceed 5 billion and Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) connections to be 300 million; 5G will represent almost 80% of FWA connections”; mention the report.

FWA is a technology that allows you to maximize telecommunications coverage, and in the last 12 months the number of providers offering 5G through FWA has increased from 57 to 88. 5G with FWA will also reach emerging markets in 2022: close to 40% of the new launches took place in countries such as Mexico, South Africa, Nigeria and the Philippines.

5G in Mexico

According to the Ericsson report, 5G: The new wave, in Mexico 48% of users will migrate to 5G services in 2023 and 24% already have a device ready for 5G, so it is expected that by 2023 there will be 16 million subscribed to 5G and that -globally- during that same year, at least 30% of smartphone users will intend to subscribe to 5G technology.

In another study conducted with Analysys Mason called: The Future Mobile Value in Emerging Markets, the costs and benefits of 5G rollout are discussed in 15 emerging countries, including Mexico, Brazil, Chile, and Colombia. It is concluded that these countries could benefit from the deployment of 5G from a GDP growth between 0.3% and 0.46% until 2035, with an estimated cost-benefit ratio of between 3 and 7 times. In the case of Mexico, when comparing the cost that the country must incur and the economic benefits that this will bring, it is calculated 6.3 times higher than the incremental cost of expanding coverage.

With information from Nicolás Lucas.