5G will boost global traffic

The Ericsson Mobility Report in 2017 showed total mobile traffic will grow by a factor of eight over 2017-23.

5G will represent 20% of global traffic by 2023, and video is expected to grow 10 times, reaching 75% of total traffic over the next five years.

Nadine Allen, president and country manager of Ericsson Thailand, said the technology afforded by 5G could provide data rates up to 100 times faster than 4G, which will create opportunities for new use cases in IoT, augmented reality and virtual reality applications, smart vehicles, remote healthcare, and robotics.

According to Ericsson’s new economic study of enhanced mobile broadband, 5G will make the transfer of each gigabyte 10 times cheaper than under 4G.

Thai telecom operators can add a further US$2.6 billion (83.3 billion baht) or 22% in revenue by 2026, driven by the fifth-generation (5G) wireless network, the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem and digital transformation in the manufacturing, energy and utilities sectors.

“The enhanced mobile broadband will be the first 5G use case in the country and that will evolve into IoT use cases,” said Ms Allen.

First-mover operators of 5G will be able to gain several competitive advantages including offloading the existing 4G network, moving heavy data-consuming users to 5G, capturing lucrative use cases and business models, and strengthening its leadership brand.

“IoT and 5G are fundamental to realising the Digital Thailand vision, thus operators and the government should be preparing to capitalise on the full potential of 5G,” Ms Allen said, adding that while 4G remains critical for all telecom operators, stepping towards 5G is key to securing new revenue pools and boosting competitiveness.

Ms Allen said 5G is critical for managing data traffic growth while boosting capacity and efficiency because data traffic demands have been growing significantly every year.

For Thailand, she said operators expect to gain an additional 10% of revenue per year on average after 5G adoption.

“5G ecosystem development in Thailand is expected to begin between 2020 and 2022,” she said.

However, Ms Allen said spectrum allocation and industry collaboration are keys for driving 5G ecosystem development in country.