Commercial 5G roll-out expected in 2018, India to follow suit
2018 is set to go down in history as a breakthrough year for information technology, with commercial roll-out of 5G technology expected by the end of this year, said Swedish telecom company, Ericsson. Telecom operators in the US will be the first to roll out the service, and other countries like South Korea, Japan, China, and India are set to follow suit. Here's more.
Four major telecom operators in the US have already confirmed the launch of commercial 5G services which they will be launching between late 2018 and mid-2019. Meanwhile, launches are expected soon in South Korea, Japan, and China, and these markets are expected to see high 5G subscription volumes in the first few months itself. By 2023, the world will have one billion 5G subscribers.
Meanwhile, Ericsson expects India to fully adopt 5G by 2023. India has already seen a massive spurt in mobile data consumption, driven by low data prices and high speeds available in LTE connections. India's total monthly mobile data traffic, at the end of 2017, stood at a massive 1.9 exabytes (that's 1,900,000 terabytes!), and is expected to hit a massive 10 exabytes by 2023.
Ericsson also says that not only will 5G offer high speeds, but will also usher in a new era in mobile data consumption. 5G speeds, eventually, would enable enhanced mobile broadband services like virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and 4K video streaming. The company predicts that, by 2023, over 20% of all data traffic in the world would be on 5G.
"20 per cent [of traffic on 5G] in 2023 is potentially more than all kinds of traffic we have today - about 1.5 times more than the total of 4G/3G/2G traffic today," said Patrik Cerwall, Head of Strategic Marketing, Business Area Networks, Ericsson.
