The GSMA’s Vision 2040 study warns that without decisive action many cities will face mobile capacity constraints as early as 2030. Its analysis finds that, if mid-band spectrum availability stays at current levels, cities that together represent more than half of the world’s urban population could be capacity constrained within a decade. Because mobile reliability, uplink capacity and latency directly affect productivity and customer experience, organisations should reassess plans now and align strategy with emerging spectrum realities.
Below are the report’s key findings and what they mean for enterprises planning connectivity-dependent services.
Long-term spectrum planning underpins enterprise strategy
Preparing for 6G requires long lead times. Device ecosystems and radio equipment development can take a decade or more, and operators must decide on fibre backhaul, RAN upgrades and site acquisition years before new services launch. Enterprises building AI-driven products, mobility solutions or real-time services rely on this predictability to design dependable systems.
The GSMA’s modelling estimates 6G could account for roughly 5 billion connections by 2040 — about half of global mobile connections — while 4G and 5G will remain significant, especially in emerging markets. Spectrum re-farming will therefore be gradual. Operators will depend on multi-RAT spectrum sharing (MRSS) to run multiple generations of mobile technology in parallel. MRSS improves efficiency relative to today’s dynamic spectrum sharing, but coexistence adds technical and operational complexity.
AI, sensing, and power users
Demand shifts to intelligence-driven workloads
Traffic volumes rise across every scenario modelled by the GSMA. Even the most conservative projection expects roughly 10% annual growth between 2030 and 2040, reaching about 1,700 EB/month. In a high-growth scenario driven largely by AI-enabled applications, traffic could approach 4,000 EB/month.
The report identifies four ways AI increases traffic:
- New AI-driven applications, including multimodal assistants;
- Higher performance requirements for existing experiences (for example, personalised or interactive video);
- Longer online durations as services become more immersive and continuously connected;
- Some compensating efficiencies from compression and optimisation, which will not offset overall growth.
Enterprises that deploy AI assistants, hybrid cloud-edge processing, or intensive video services will contribute to rising uplink and downlink demand, with uplink needs becoming increasingly important for real-time, interactive workloads.
Normalised heavy use
Today, about 10% of users generate 60–70% of mobile traffic; as digitally native cohorts age, these heavy-usage patterns will become mainstream. Organisations building enterprise mobility platforms, frontline worker solutions and customer engagement tools should design for substantially higher uplink and downlink loads per user.
Concentration of demand
Traffic is highly concentrated geographically: the report finds around 83% of traffic occurs in just 5% of geographic areas. Dense urban traffic per square kilometre can be nearly 700 times greater than rural traffic. For enterprises operating in logistics hubs, retail corridors, stadiums or transport nodes, the performance of local RAN deployments will be decisive for service quality and reliability.
Mid-band spectrum as 6G’s anchor capability
Mid-band spectrum is central to delivering wide-area 6G capabilities. The GSMA finds dense urban areas will need roughly 2–3 GHz of mid-band spectrum globally by 2035–2040, and 2.5–4 GHz in higher-demand markets. Many countries currently allocate around 1 GHz of mid-band, implying an additional 1–3 GHz will be required in many markets.
The study stresses at least 2 GHz of mid-band spectrum should be operational by 2030; otherwise early 6G deployments risk severe congestion.
Additional mid-band spectrum enables:
- wide channels needed for sub-10 ms latency (important for digital twins and real-time sensor networks);
- balanced uplink and downlink performance for true bi-directional, low-latency applications;
- more efficient reuse of existing bands via MRSS; and
- reduced dependence on mmWave, which is expensive to scale across wide areas.
Operational constraints to manage
- Densification has diminishing returns: many urban networks already have inter-site distances of 200–800 m; beyond that, deployment costs increase rapidly, making spectrum a more scalable option.
- mmWave will remain supplementary: it’s useful for very localised capacity but likely to carry only 5–10% of dense-urban traffic and cannot replace mid-band for wide-area needs.
- Wi‑Fi offload is not a substitute: unmanaged Wi‑Fi cannot reliably deliver the predictable performance required for many enterprise and real‑time 6G use cases.
- Spectrum re-farming must be phased: with substantial 4G and 5G usage persisting through 2040, MRSS will be essential to balance multiple mobile generations.
Recommendations for telecoms companies
- Create a long-term spectrum roadmap aligned with the GSMA’s guidance: target 2–3 GHz globally and 2.5–4 GHz in high-demand markets.
- Prioritise allocations in the upper 6 GHz band, which can deliver roughly 700 MHz of new capacity between 6.425 and 7.125 GHz.
- Design networks with MRSS to manage 4G, 5G and 6G coexistence efficiently.
- Model future uplink-heavy workloads and plan for asymmetric traffic patterns with greater uplink capacity.
- Engage vertical industries (manufacturing, transport, retail) to define guaranteed latency and reliability requirements and reflect those needs in network SLAs and architectures.
- Evaluate densification strategically: use it where it provides the best ROI, but treat additional spectrum as the primary scaling lever for broad-area capacity.
Conclusions
Spectrum policy may seem abstract, but its effects are tangible. A city or nation’s ability to provide reliable 6G performance will shape economic growth, service innovation and digital inclusion. Telecom operators and enterprise leaders should align investment plans with forthcoming spectrum decisions to ensure next‑generation connectivity supports future services and business models.
(Image source: “CSIRO Parkes Radio Telescope” by amandabhslater is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.)