21 Nov 2019

Making money

The 2019 Global Mobile Broadband Forum hosted by Huawei in Zurich, Switzerland provided a lot of insight into the current state of 5G roll-out around the world while also showing how individual MNOs are deploying it and the benefits they have seen from doing so. Sam Fenwick has the details.

Ken Hu, Huawei’s deputy chairman, kicked off the event by highlighting the pace of global 5G adoption, saying that by the end of this year there will be more than 60 commercial 5G networks in operation, and that by the end of September there were more than 130 5G devices on the market including both consumer premise equipment solutions (CPEs) and smartphones. Hu also said that in South Korea, where less than six months after the launch of 5G services, 3.5 million people are using 5G, data consumption among early adopters has increased three-fold, up to 1.3GB per month. He also noted the high data consumption requirements of virtual reality and augmented reality services, putting these at around 4GB/10 minutes and 600mb every minute respectively, and said the South Korean carrier LG U+ released 5G-powered VR/AR services as part of its premium data plans. In just three months after 5G launch, its proportion of premium subscribers grew from 3.1 per cent to 5.3 per cent.