Mobility is central to the growth of connectivity during the period between 2018 and 2023, according to a Cisco 5G forecast.
The Cisco Annual Internet Report found that 5G will support more than 10% of the world’s connections by 2023. And its rise will be for good reason: 5G speeds will be 575 Mbps, which is 13 times faster than average mobile connections. There will be just short of 30 billion devices and connections by 2023 and almost half of them – 45% – will be mobile.
Cisco also found that WiFi 6 will be hot: It will grow 13-fold between this year and 2023 and will be used on 11% of all public hotspots by the end of the period.
“For the past 50 years, each decade introduced a new mobile technology with cutting-edge innovations,” according to Cisco’s press release on the report. “Mobile bandwidth requirements have evolved from voice calls and texting to ultra-high-definition (UHD) video and a variety of augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR) applications. Consumers and business users worldwide continue to create new demands and expectations for mobile networking. This ongoing trend is clearly highlighted by the adoption and use of mobile applications. Social networking, video streaming and downloads, business productivity, e-commerce and gaming will drive the continued growth of mobile applications with nearly 300 billion downloaded by 2023.”
Cisco 5G Forecast
Cisco found that more than 70% of the world’s population – 5.7 billion people – have 2G, 3G, 4G or 5G connectivity. Forty-five percent of all network devices will be mobile connected (including 3G and below, 4G, 5G or LPWA). Fifty-five percent will be wired or connected via WiFi. By 2023, LPWA will be 14.4% of all total mobile connections, a great increase from the 2.5% in 2018.
Global WiFi hotspots will grow four-fold between 2018 and 2023. In raw numbers, the growth will be from 169 million to 628 million. Average global mobile connection speeds will increase from 13 Mbps to 44 Mbps between 2018 and 2023 and average global WiFi connections will speed from 30 Mbps to 92 Mbps during the same period, according to Cisco.
Last February, Cisco predicted that mobile traffic will reach almost a zettabyte of traffic annually by 2022. This would mean that it would represent one-fifth of all global IP traffic.
