With the commercial deployment of 5G, the coverage build-out and number of subscriptions are likely to grow faster than expected. Per the latest edition of the Ericsson (ERIC - Free Report) Mobility Report, 5G is expected to reach 40% of the world’s population with 1.5 billion subscriptions in 2024, making it the fastest generation of cellular technology to be rolled out globally. The industry boom has been magnified by innovation that reuses existing infrastructure and available spectrum for increased network capacity, lower cost per gigabyte and new use cases.

Primarily, North America and North East Asia are expected to lead the 5G uptake. While in North America, 5G subscriptions are predicted to account for 55% of mobile subscriptions by the end of 2024, the same in North East Asia is expected to be more than 43%. In Western Europe, 5G is estimated to account for about 30% of mobile subscriptions by the end of 2024.

Meanwhile, the uptake of NB-IoT and Cat-M1 technologies is driving growth in the number of cellular IoT connections worldwide. Cellular IoT is on its way to becoming the preferred choice for wide-area IoT applications. Driven by a strong uptake in Northeast Asia, connections are set to surpass 4 billion by 2024. Of the total cellular IoT connections forecast for 2024, Northeast Asia is expected to account for 2.7 billion.