Operators will be making annual revenues of $300 billion by 2025 from 5G connections from $894 million in 2019, Juniper Research said.

5G service revenues would be 38 percent of total operator billed revenues by 2025 from the anticipated 1.5 billion 5G connections that will be accounting for 14 percent of all cellular connections.

GSMA, telecom industry association, earlier said Asia with 675 million 5G connections by 2025, more than half of the global 5G total expected by that point, will dominate 5G markets in the world.

The Juniper Research report did not give the split in anticipated revenue between consumers and enterprises from 5G business. Earlier, GSMA indicated that telecom operators need to focus on enterprise business to boost 5G revenue.

Earlier research reports indicated that 5G smartphones will be too costly in the first phase of the 5G launches.

“China’s smartphone market will begin to recover in 2019 and beyond, driven in the short term by a large, built up refresh cycle across all segments, and in the outer years of the forecast supported by 5G migration,” Ryan Reith, program vice president with IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers, said, analysing the smartphone market report for Q3 2018.

Mobile operators must optimise pricing strategies and network configuration to secure a return on their 5G investment. Pricing strategies must reflect data usage, device type and required network speeds to ensure profitability.

Data traffic generated by 5G connections will reach 955 Exabytes annually by 2025, the equivalent to 143 billion hours of 4K video streaming.

Telecom operators need to implement technologies that minimise the cost-per-bit of 5G data, including network virtualisation, to provide on-demand network agility for the data intensive demands of 5G connections.

Juniper Research author Sam Barker said: “5G for home broadband services will be the biggest driver in growth of cellular traffic after initial launches. By 2025, the average 5G home broadband connection will generate over 430GB of data per month.”

Cumulative 5G research and development spend by operators, hardware vendors and public bodies will approach $60 billion by the end of 2018. Network operators will spend nearly $30 billion in 2018 alone on trialling networks in preparation for commercial launches in 2019.