Cisco’s annual Internet survey forecasts trends set to impact global Internet adoption, device/connection availability, as well as network performance. Among the trends highlighted, Cisco predicts 5G will represent more than 10 percent of global mobile interactions by the year 2023.
In the U.S., there are a few early 5G adopters. Verizon and T-Mobile are two examples. Outside the U.S., Chinese manufacturer Huawei continues to challenge the limited 5G bandwidth the U.S. faces, and some would say the U.S. is losing the race to outfit its mobile networks with faster speeds.
Despite insufficient foundation and bandwidth, the U.S. and other countries are still rolling out 5G networks, meaning for those with access to 5G, they will see faster Internet, download, and connectivity speeds.
5G Adaption in the United States
By 2023, more than 70 percent, nearly six billion people in the U.S.), will have mobile connectivity via 2G, 3G, 4G or 5G, according to the report. It says, global average broadband speeds reached 45.9 Mbps in 2018, and in 2023, they should reach 110 Mbps.
The number of devices per household will see a bump as well, and rise to ten per house. Nearly half of the devices will be video-capable and support roughly 15 billion machine-to-machine interactions for IoT apps.
All this has massive implications for the future of work, remote work, and digital transformation in the U.S. Let’s dive into Cisco’s survey to see what else the collaboration giant found.
5G Adaption Across the United Kingdom
Shifting gears to the UK, Cisco predicts by 2023, nearly 64 million Internet users. At 93 percent of the UK’s population, this is up from 60 million or 89 percent of the UK population in 2018. According to Cisco, the UK will have 719 million networked devices by 2023. That’s up from 415 million in 2018.
Cisco’s report said the UK will have almost 11 networked devices per capita by the year 2023, up from seven percent per capita in 2018, three percent of which will consist of connected devices. In 2018, that number was two.
In an enterprise setting, the number of all networked devices used in business applications should remain the same as it was in 2018, 26 percent. The report’s final UK insight, the UK should reach 42 million 5G connections by 2023 and 5G will account for almost 20 percent of total mobile connections.
Mobility to Increase by over 70 Percent on a Global Scale
Cisco said, over 70 percent of the global population will have mobile connectivity by 2023, and the total number of global mobile subscribers will grow from five billion, 66 percent of the world’s population in 2018, to six billion, seventy-one-percent of the global population by the year 2023.
By 2023, global mobile devices will grow from nine billion in 2018 to 13 billion by 2023, almost one-and-a-half-billion of those devices, Cisco said, will be 5G capable.
Speeds will more than Double, In Some Cases, Triple
Cisco projects, fixed broadband speeds will more than double by 2023, and that global fixed broadband speeds will reach 110.4 Mbps, up from 45.9 Mbps in 2018. Mobile (cellular) speeds will more than triple by 2023. Wi-Fi speeds from mobile devices will triple and 5G speeds will be 13 times higher than the average mobile connection, Cisco reported.
With all these new capabilities predicted to radically change the way we communicate, there will undoubtedly be new security concerns as a connected society could mean more unwanted snooping on private devices using new and more innovative measures of intrusion.
