The number of 5G connections is projected to grow rapidly over the next few years as hundreds of operators accelerate their rollout plans. Analyst firm CCS Insight now forecasts 340 million 5G connections in 2021, growing past 1 billion in the first half of 2023. By 2025, CCS Insight expects total 5G connections to reach 2.7 billion—more than one in five global connections.
The research firm revised its predictions after noting a recent surge of activity among network operators worldwide.
Kester Mann, principal analyst at CCS Insight, commented: “Major US carriers have long signaled plans to launch 5G in late 2018, but we are now seeing increased urgency from providers in Europe, the Middle East and China. Europe may still lag the leading markets by roughly a year, yet several regional operators are determined to introduce commercial 5G services as early as next year.”
In the United States, Verizon and its technology partner Nokia demonstrated a successful transmission of a 3GPP New Radio (NR) 5G signal to a receiver in a moving vehicle. The trial, conducted at Nokia’s Murray Hill, NJ campus in June 2018, followed earlier successful outdoor data sessions using the 5G NR standard and multi-carrier aggregation techniques that pushed throughput into the gigabit-per-second range. Nokia also signed a memorandum of understanding with China’s Tencent to pursue joint R&D exploring 5G applications for Chinese internet users.
In Switzerland, Ericsson and Swisscom announced completion of what has been described as Europe’s first end-to-end, multi-vendor 5G NR call. The call ran over Swisscom’s 3GPP-compliant network using Ericsson radio equipment together with Ericsson’s Cloud Packet Core, a platform designed to deliver converged communication services. The Swiss Federal Communications Commission (ComCom) has tentatively scheduled a 5G spectrum auction for January 2019, with blocks in the 700 MHz, 1,400 MHz, 2,600 MHz and 2.6 GHz bands set for bidding.
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