5G Cycle Reaches Middle Stage After Strong 2023 Growth: Ericsson

The 5G cycle is reaching the middle stages, with strong growth over the past two years, Ericsson executives said during a Mobile World Live webinar on Thursday. At the end of 2023, 63% of wireless subscribers in the U.S. were using 5G, which is “remarkable,” especially given the 42% reported a year earlier, said Peter Linder, head-5G marketing at Ericsson North America.

Last year will probably be seen as the top year for growth throughout the 5G cycle, Linder said. The annual increase in U.S. data use is equivalent to the total data use in 2019, the last year before 5G, he said. 5G on mid-band spectrum is now reaching 90% of Americans, though fewer than half the cellsites in the U.S. have been upgraded to 5G mid-band, he said. Mid-band plays an important role in providing better coverage to close the digital divide in rural America, he said.

Fixed wireless access (FWA) is becoming “stronger and stronger,” Linder said: “Fixed wireless is capturing all the growth, fiber is growing as fast as copper is declining, and cable is flat.” Linder also discussed the importance of open application programmable interfaces. “Different application developers will be able to access capabilities in the network so that we can start and deliver better [customer] experiences,” he said.

Less than 20% of wireless networks globally use a stand-alone 5G architecture, which means they’re not making available all the capabilities of 5G, Linder said. More changes will come with 5G-advanced, on the way to 6G, he said. Linder said he’s most excited about reduced capability (RedCap) technology (see 2303270060). RedCap will let industry take some 5G capabilities and introduce lower-cost devices, he said.

Private 5G networks so far have mostly been pilot projects, but the U.S. is near launching private 5G at scale, Linder said. “We see a lot of potential in manufacturing and warehouses,” which are open, indoor environments that mid-band and high-band solutions can serve, he said. The transportation and energy sectors also have a strong interest in private networks, he said.

The next step in the evolution of 5G has to be moving to stand-alone networks, said Paul Challoner, vice president-network products at Ericsson North America. “That is not an option, it’s a foundation and something that has to happen,” Challoner said. Stand-alone is necessary for 5G slicing, RedCap -- which is 5G native IoT -- and all the other technologies that will be seen in the second half of the 5G cycle, he said. Wearables and industrial IoT will be “really important” and “you can’t do that without stand-alone,” he said.

Challoner sees some role for citizens broadband radio service spectrum in carrier and private networks, he said in response to an audience question. The first choice for carriers is licensed, high-power dedicated spectrum, he said. One advantage of CBRS is that it’s inexpensive or free, he said. Private networks don’t always have access to licensed spectrum, he said. A number of U.S. operators are delivering FWA through CBRS, accessing as much as 80 MHz of the band, he said. CBRS can also be used for offload, especially for small cells, he said. Ericsson has trialed using CBRS spectrum for the industrial IoT, he said.