The achievements made by 5G in its first three years are equivalent to those that 4G made in its first five years, says Peng Song, President of Huawei’s ICT Strategy & Marketing.

The global user penetration rate of 5G in its first three years amounts to that of 4G in its first five years. Operators reporting over 20 percent 5G user penetrations during the first round of deployment have seen significant growth in mobile revenue.

5G market is shifting from risk-based to revenue-based decision-making for even more assurance of business success.

Huawei found that fast migration of 5G users and traffic is the key: if an operator migrated 30 percent of traffic to 5G eMBB in three years, it would take less than four years to see ROI. This duration would be shorter if the operator also deployed FWA and ToB services, Peng Song said at an event at the Mobile World Congress (MWC 2023).

5G networks use capabilities to provide differentiated experience for different users. For example, operators can provide guaranteed downlink bit rates for VIP users and a good experience for uplink services. Operators in China have already begun to explore this new paradigm.

By the end of 2022, 95 operators had launched 5G FWA services for more than 10 million home users. 5G FWA sunsets old copper lines in developed markets and enables home broadband access in emerging markets. Operators in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa have reported outstanding results.

Operators can set up extensive service connections with enterprises through 5G private networks, creating a market space for enterprise digital transformation that is three to ten times larger than the market for private networks themselves. This will also drive the sales of cloud, data center, F5G, and other value-added services. The current 5G ToB private network market outside China is developing rapidly. In 2022 alone, the total number of networks built doubled.

According to the latest GSMA and GSA statistics, by December 2022, more than 240 5G networks had been put into commercial use worldwide, over 1,700 different types of 5G terminals had been released, and the number of 5G users had exceeded 1 billion. ARPU of the world’s top 20 operators had increased by 10 percent, which is 1 percent higher than the global baseline.

5G services market is forecast to grow by $311.93 bn during 2022-2027, accelerating at a CAGR of 31.13 percent during the forecast period, according to Infiniti Research.

Caption: Peng Song giving a keynote speech at the Business Success Summit for MWC 2023 in Barcelona