5G Statistics 2026
By Axis Intelligence Research and James Porter | Last updated: July 9, 2026
Quick Answer
Global 5G subscriptions reached 3.1 billion in Q1 2026 — crossing the three-billion mark for the first time — while 5G networks cover 55% of the world’s population, according to Ericsson and the ITU. Axis Intelligence’s cross-source analysis finds the industry is spending roughly $567 for every new 5G connection added through 2030.
Key Findings
- Global 5G subscriptions surpassed 3.1 billion in Q1 2026, with 162 million net additions in the quarter alone, according to the Ericsson Mobility Report June 2026 — up from 2.9 billion at end-2025 (33% of all mobile subscriptions).
- 5G networks now reach 55% of the world’s population, but the divide is severe: 84% coverage in high-income countries versus just 4% in low-income countries, per the ITU’s Facts and Figures 2025.
- 392 operators have launched commercial 5G networks as of Q1 2026, and 95 of them have gone 5G Standalone (SA) — up 42% since Q1 2025, according to GSA’s State of the Market report.
- In the United States, 5G now accounts for 259 million of the country’s 579 million wireless connections (45%), running across a network of 447,605 cell sites, per CTIA’s 2025 Annual Survey.
- According to Axis Intelligence’s cross-source analysis of GSMA and Ericsson data, the global telecom industry is on pace to spend approximately $567 for every net-new 5G connection added between 2025 and 2030 — the first published 5G Capex-to-Connection ratio of its kind.
Global 5G Adoption: How Many People Have 5G in 2026?
5G adoption is no longer an early-adopter story — it is now the fastest-growing segment of the mobile market by a wide margin. The Ericsson Mobility Report reports that global 5G subscriptions reached 2.9 billion at the end of 2025, up 151 million in the fourth quarter alone, and now represent one-third of all mobile subscriptions worldwide.
That 2.9 billion figure is independently corroborated by the ITU’s Facts and Figures 2025 report, which separately estimates global 5G subscriptions at nearly 3 billion — the first time the ITU has published a global 5G subscription estimate. According to Axis Intelligence Research, two independently-produced estimates landing within roughly 100 million of each other gives this figure unusual confidence for an industry where vendor and analyst numbers often diverge by hundreds of millions.
Around 370 service providers have now launched commercial 5G services globally, and more than 90 of those have launched or soft-launched 5G Standalone (SA) networks. 4G subscriptions, meanwhile, are now in structural decline — down 64 million in Q4 2025 alone to 4.7 billion total.
| Technology | End of 2025 | Share of Mobile Subscriptions | 2031 Forecast | Forecast Share | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5G | 2.9 billion | 33% | 6.4 billion | ~67% (two-thirds) | Ericsson Mobility Report |
| 4G | 4.7 billion (declining) | ~53% | Continued decline | — | Ericsson Mobility Report |
| 5G Standalone (SA) | ~370 operators live or soft-launched | — | 4.1 billion | ~65% of all 5G | Ericsson Mobility Report |
Ericsson projects that 5G will overtake 4G as the dominant mobile access technology by subscription before the end of 2027 — nine years after commercial launch. By 2031, two-thirds of all mobile subscriptions globally are expected to run on 5G.
Regional 5G Subscription Penetration
Adoption is highly uneven by region. The Ericsson Mobility Report’s regional outlook shows North America leading by a wide margin, with North East Asia, Western Europe, and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries forming the next tier.
| Region | 5G Subscription Penetration (end of 2025) | Source |
|---|---|---|
| North America | 79% | Ericsson Mobility Report |
| North East Asia | 61% | Ericsson Mobility Report |
| Western Europe | 55% | Ericsson Mobility Report |
| GCC Countries | 55% | Ericsson Mobility Report |
By 2031, Ericsson forecasts that Western Europe, North America, and the GCC countries will all cross 90% 5G subscription penetration — effectively approaching saturation in those markets.
Update — Ericsson Mobility Report, June 2026: The 2.9 billion end-2025 figure was surpassed faster than projected. Ericsson’s June 2026 edition confirms global 5G subscriptions reached 3.1 billion in Q1 2026, with 162 million new subscriptions added in that single quarter. The same report documents that 5G networks now carry 48% of all global mobile data traffic — despite accounting for roughly one-third of subscriptions — confirming that 5G users generate disproportionately more data than 4G users. Ericsson projects that figure will reach 85% by 2031. On the network slicing front, commercial differentiated connectivity offerings based on 5G SA grew from 65 (November 2025) to 84 globally by June 2026 — a 29% increase in one quarter, signalling the transition from pilot to mainstream commercialisation. Uplink traffic is also accelerating: 43 of 55 service providers measured by Ericsson showed higher uplink than downlink growth in Q1 2026, driven by AI workloads, video sharing, and cloud storage. Ericsson’s scenario modeling suggests AI-driven uplink traffic could be three times higher in 2031 than in 2025.
5G Network Coverage: Where in the World Has 5G?
Subscriptions measure who has chosen 5G; coverage measures who can. The two numbers tell very different stories, and the gap between them is one of the defining issues in global connectivity policy for 2026.
According to the ITU’s Facts and Figures 2025 report, 5G networks now cover 55% of the world’s population — up from a standing start in 2019. But that headline figure conceals an enormous disparity: 84% of people in high-income countries have 5G access, compared with just 4% of people in low-income countries.
| Region | 5G Population Coverage (2025) | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Europe | 74% | ITU Facts and Figures 2025 |
| Asia-Pacific | 70% | ITU Facts and Figures 2025 |
| Americas | 60% | ITU Facts and Figures 2025 |
| Arab States | 13% | ITU Facts and Figures 2025 |
| Africa | 12% | ITU Facts and Figures 2025 |
| CIS | 8% | ITU Facts and Figures 2025 |
| Global | 55% | ITU Facts and Figures 2025 |
The urban-rural divide compounds the income divide. Globally, 66% of urban residents have access to a 5G network, compared with only 40% of rural residents — a 26-percentage-point gap. In high-income countries, that gap narrows (89% urban vs. 59% rural), but in low-income countries, 5G reaches only 9% of urban populations and is “essentially unavailable” in rural areas, according to the ITU.
For context, 4G remains the workhorse of global mobile broadband, covering 93% of the world’s population. The roughly 312 million people still outside any 3G-or-better coverage area are concentrated almost entirely in rural Africa — a gap the ITU notes has closed by only six percentage points since 2018.
According to Axis Intelligence, this 26-point urban-rural coverage gap is the clearest leading indicator of where 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) — covered later in this report — will expand fastest. FWA exists specifically to convert coverage that’s already built but not yet connected to a paying subscription into revenue, which is why operators are targeting exactly these underserved zones.
Axis Intelligence Original Analysis: The 5G Coverage-to-Adoption Gap
Coverage statistics and adoption statistics are usually published in separate reports, by separate organizations, using separate regional taxonomies — which means nobody had cross-referenced them directly. Axis Intelligence did.
We took the ITU’s regional 5G population coverage figures (the percentage of people who can physically access a 5G signal) and set them against Ericsson’s regional 5G subscription penetration figures (the percentage of existing mobile subscriptions actively running on 5G) for the closest-matching sub-regions. The resulting differential — which we call the Axis Intelligence 5G Coverage-to-Adoption Gap — did not exist as a published metric before this analysis.
| ITU Region | 5G Population Coverage (ITU, 2025) | Closest Ericsson Sub-Region | 5G Subscription Penetration (Ericsson, end-2025) | Axis Differential |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Europe | 74% | Western Europe | 55% | −19 pts |
| Asia-Pacific | 70% | North East Asia | 61% | −9 pts |
| Americas | 60% | North America | 79% | +19 pts |
| Arab States | 13% | GCC Countries | 55% | +42 pts |
Two distinct patterns emerge from this gap:
Negative gaps (Europe, Asia-Pacific) signal “built but not yet bought” 5G. In both cases, the broader region’s coverage figure exceeds the leading sub-region’s adoption figure — meaning that even in Western Europe and North East Asia, where 5G networks are already extensive, a meaningful share of mobile subscribers have not yet upgraded their plan or device to use them. According to Axis Intelligence, this represents the single largest untapped 5G upgrade opportunity for operators in mature markets: the infrastructure is sunk, but the revenue isn’t realized.
Positive gaps (Americas/North America, Arab States/GCC) signal high-performing outliers masking regional averages. North America’s 79% adoption rate vastly exceeds the 60% coverage average for “the Americas” as a whole, because Latin America’s lower coverage drags the regional average down. The most extreme case is the Arab States region, where the GCC countries’ 55% adoption rate sits 42 points above the 13% regional coverage average — the GCC operates as a 5G-advanced enclave within a region where 5G is otherwise nearly absent.
This finding has direct implications for how operators, regulators, and investors should read “regional” 5G statistics: a single regional average can hide both saturation and absence at the same time.
5G Standalone, 5G-Advanced, and the Road to 6G — Q1 2026 Snapshot
5G’s second wave is architectural, not just numerical. The shift from 5G Non-Standalone (which piggybacks on 4G core networks) to 5G Standalone (SA) — and from there to 5G-Advanced — is what unlocks network slicing, RedCap for IoT, and the low-latency guarantees that enterprise use cases require.
According to GSA’s State of the Market report (data as of end-March 2026), the global 5G network landscape looks like this:
| Metric | Count (Q1 2026) | Year-over-Year Change | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Operators with commercial 5G launched | 392 | +14% vs. March 2025 | GSA State of the Market, April 2026 |
| Operators with 5G Standalone (SA) launched | 95 | +42% vs. Q1 2025 | GSA State of the Market, April 2026 |
| Operators investing in 5G-Advanced | 35 | +71% YoY | GSA State of the Market, April 2026 |
| Operators with live 5G-Advanced service | 11 | — | GSA State of the Market, April 2026 |
| Announced 5G devices | 4,256 | +24% YoY | GSA State of the Market, April 2026 |
The 392 commercial 5G networks now represent 44% of all LTE and 5G networks combined — meaning 5G has become the default for new network deployments even as 4G LTE networks remain in service. GSA frames this as an inflection point: the relevant question for 2026 is no longer how many 5G networks exist, but what those networks are now capable of doing.
Ericsson’s longer-range forecast aligns with this maturation curve. By 2031, 5G SA subscriptions are projected to reach 4.1 billion — roughly 65% of all 5G subscriptions at that point, up from a small fraction today.
Spectrum activity underpins all of this network growth. GSA counts 11 5G spectrum auctions completed globally over the past year, at an average price of $663.4 million each — a reminder that 5G expansion is gated by spectrum availability as much as by operator willingness to spend.
Looking past 5G: 6G and the US spectrum pipeline
Standardization work for 6G (3GPP Release 21, based on ITU’s IMT-2030 framework) has already begun. Ericsson forecasts global 6G subscriptions will reach 180 million by the end of 2031 — modest in absolute terms, but notable as the first formal 6G subscription forecast from a major equipment vendor. The US, China, Japan, the GCC countries, and South Korea are expected to be early movers, given their head start on 5G SA.
None of this happens without spectrum. In the United States, the FCC’s 2025 policy review confirms a pipeline targeting 800 MHz of spectrum released for 5G and 6G use by 2034, including a low-band AWS-3 auction in 2026 and an Upper C-band mid-band auction required by July 2027. Spectrum remains the single hardest constraint on how fast any of the device and network numbers above can keep climbing — a theme directly relevant to our GEO statistics coverage of how infrastructure constraints shape which markets get cited as “AI-ready” first.
United States 5G Infrastructure: Cell Sites, Devices, and Spending
The US remains the world’s most 5G-saturated large market by subscription penetration (79%, per Ericsson, above), and CTIA’s 2025 Annual Wireless Industry Survey — the longest-running dataset of its kind, tracking the industry since 1985 — shows the infrastructure behind that number.
According to the CTIA 2025 Annual Wireless Industry Survey, full-year 2024 figures show:
| Metric | 2024 Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Total wireless connections | 579 million (1.7 per person) | CTIA Annual Survey 2025 |
| 5G devices in service | 259 million (45% of all devices, +20% YoY) | CTIA Annual Survey 2025 |
| Total operational cell sites | 447,605 | CTIA Annual Survey 2025 |
| Small cells in service | 166,264 (+6% YoY) | CTIA Annual Survey 2025 |
| Annual capital investment | $29.4 billion | CTIA Annual Survey 2025 |
| Cumulative capex since start of 2018 | $219 billion | CTIA Annual Survey 2025 |
| Mobile data traffic | 132.5 trillion MB (+32% YoY) | CTIA Annual Survey 2025 |
A few of these numbers deserve context. The 132.5 trillion MB of mobile data traffic in 2024 is 341 times the volume recorded in 2010 — and the 32-trillion-MB year-over-year jump was the largest single-year increase in US wireless history. Small cells — the dense, short-range infrastructure that makes high-band 5G viable in urban areas — now account for 37% of all US cell sites, up from roughly 35% the prior year.
According to Axis Intelligence’s reading of CTIA’s decade-by-decade figures, small cells crossing the one-third share of all US sites is the clearest infrastructure signature of the shift from broad-coverage 4G to dense, capacity-driven 5G: macro towers alone cannot solve the density problem that high-band 5G requires.
Cumulative wireless industry capital investment now stands at more than $734 billion, not including over $233 billion separately paid to the US Treasury for spectrum licenses. That capital intensity is also why expanding 5G coverage to underserved areas remains contested policy ground — and why the cybercrime statistics implications of a rapidly expanding attack surface (every new cell site and IoT endpoint is a new node) increasingly intersect with telecom infrastructure planning.
Global 5G Investment: The Axis Intelligence 5G Capex-to-Connection Index
Industry reports routinely publish two numbers in isolation: how much operators will spend, and how many 5G connections will exist. Nobody had divided one by the other. Axis Intelligence did — producing the first 5G Capex-to-Connection Index.
The calculation
According to the GSMA’s Mobile Economy 2026 report, the global mobile industry will invest a combined $1.2 trillion in capital expenditure between 2025 and 2030, and 57% of the world’s 8.8 billion mobile connections will be on 5G by 2030. Separately, Ericsson reports that 2.9 billion connections were already on 5G at the end of 2025.
Putting these together:
5G connections by 2030 ≈ 8.8 billion × 57% = 5.02 billion Net-new 5G connections, 2025–2030 ≈ 5.02 billion − 2.9 billion = 2.12 billion Capex per net-new 5G connection ≈ $1.2 trillion ÷ 2.12 billion ≈ $567
What this means — and its limits
The Axis Intelligence 5G Capex-to-Connection Index of approximately $567 per net-new 5G connection (2025–2030) is an industry-wide average, not a per-operator or per-market figure. Three assumptions underpin it, and we are stating them explicitly because that is what separates a derived statistic from a guess:
- Total mobile connections are assumed to stay roughly flat at 8.8 billion through 2030. GSMA’s report does not publish a 2030 total-connections forecast directly, only the 57% 5G share; we anchor to the current total because global connection growth has been slowing toward population-growth rates.
- The $1.2 trillion capex figure covers all network technologies, not 5G exclusively. We treat it as a reasonable proxy for 5G-driven capex because 2G and 3G networks are being decommissioned (not expanded) and 4G networks are mature, meaning 5G build-out is the dominant driver of new spending in this window.
- This is a global average. Markets with high existing 5G penetration (North America, per the table above) will see a far lower marginal capex-per-connection than markets building 5G from near-zero (much of Africa and the Arab States, per our coverage analysis above).
Even with those caveats stated plainly, $567 per net-new connection gives analysts, investors, and journalists a concrete denominator that did not exist in published form before — and one we will recalculate every quarter as GSMA and Ericsson update their respective inputs.
Private 5G Networks and Enterprise Adoption
5G’s enterprise story is increasingly separate from its consumer story. Private mobile networks — dedicated 5G (or 4G) infrastructure deployed for a single organization’s site — are one of the clearest signals of where 5G investment is heading next.
According to GSA’s State of the Market report, as of Q1 2026:
| Industry Vertical | Identified Private Network Deployments | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Manufacturing | 374 | GSA State of the Market, April 2026 |
| Education & Academic Research | 169 | GSA State of the Market, April 2026 |
Manufacturing’s lead makes sense: factory floors need the deterministic latency and network slicing that 5G SA enables for robotics, automated guided vehicles, and quality-control vision systems — use cases where Wi-Fi’s interference profile and roaming limitations fall short. This finding sits alongside the GSMA’s parallel research effort: between June and August 2025, GSMA Intelligence surveyed 5,320 enterprises specifically on digital-transformation investment across 5G, private networks, AI, IoT, cloud, and edge computing — the largest enterprise connectivity survey of its kind to date.
The enterprise 5G trend also connects directly to compute infrastructure. As private 5G networks proliferate on factory floors and campuses, the edge-computing nodes that process their data feed into the same infrastructure buildout tracked in our AI data center energy consumption statistics — and the AI inference workloads increasingly running on that infrastructure are the subject of our AI agents statistics hub.
5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA): The Quiet Broadband Disruptor
While 5G smartphones get most of the attention, 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) — using a 5G connection to deliver home or business internet instead of fiber or cable — has quietly become one of 5G’s most commercially successful use cases.
According to GSA’s State of the Market report, 394 operators have now launched a 5G FWA service, with another 29 actively investing in the technology — a 59% increase in that investing cohort since June 2025. Ericsson’s forecast extends the trajectory: global FWA subscriptions on mobile networks are projected to reach 350 million by 2031, more than triple-digit growth from current levels, as 5G-Advanced upgrades expand the addressable footprint into suburban and rural areas previously limited to lower speed tiers.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Operators with launched 5G FWA service | 394 | GSA State of the Market, April 2026 |
| Operators actively investing in 5G FWA | 29 (+59% since June 2025) | GSA State of the Market, April 2026 |
| Global FWA subscriptions forecast (2031) | 350 million | Ericsson Mobility Report |
FWA’s growth has direct knock-on effects for connectivity-dependent work patterns. As 5G FWA extends broadband-equivalent speeds into areas fiber hasn’t reached, it directly expands the addressable population for the kind of distributed work patterns covered in our remote work statistics hub — and, on the security side, every new FWA gateway is also a new home-network endpoint, which is part of why we recommend reputable VPN services for any 5G-connected home office setup.
Regional 5G Adoption Forecasts Through 2030
Zooming out from individual metrics, the GSMA’s Mobile Economy 2026 report provides the most complete regional forecast for where global 5G adoption is headed by the end of the decade.
| Region | 5G Share of Mobile Connections by 2030 | Notes | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Global | 57% | Baseline for the Axis Capex-to-Connection Index above | GSMA Mobile Economy 2026 |
| Latin America | 50% | ~406 million 5G connections | GSMA Mobile Economy 2026 |
| Rest of Asia Pacific (excl. North East Asia) | 46% | — | GSMA Mobile Economy 2026 |
| Rest of MENA (excl. GCC) | 41% | — | GSMA Mobile Economy 2026 |
| Eurasia | 38% | 5G live in 9 countries to date | GSMA Mobile Economy 2026 |
| Africa | 21% | ~382 million 5G connections (large absolute growth from a low base) | GSMA Mobile Economy 2026 |
Two things are true simultaneously here. Africa’s 21% adoption rate is the lowest of any region — consistent with the 12% coverage figure from the ITU section above — yet its absolute connection growth (382 million new 5G connections by 2030) is larger than most regions’ entire current mobile subscriber base. According to Axis Intelligence Research, this is a reminder that percentage-based and absolute-connection-based 5G statistics answer fundamentally different questions, and a dataset reporting only one of them is incomplete. Meanwhile, legacy network sunsetting accelerates everywhere: GSMA projects 2G will fall to just 1% of global connections by 2030, and 3G to 5%, as carriers reallocate spectrum toward 4G/5G.
This regional unevenness is also why we maintain a dedicated electric vehicle statistics hub — connected-vehicle (V2X) features depend on exactly the kind of 5G coverage maps shown above, and a vehicle’s “smart” features will function very differently in a 74%-coverage region (Europe) versus a 12%-coverage region (Africa).
Methodology
Axis Intelligence Research compiled this dataset from six primary sources: the GSMA (Mobile Economy 2026), Ericsson (Mobility Report, data updated through Q4 2025), the International Telecommunication Union (Facts and Figures 2025), CTIA (2025 Annual Wireless Industry Survey, full-year 2024 data), the Global mobile Suppliers Association (State of the Market, data as of end-March 2026), and the FCC (2025 spectrum policy review). Every external URL cited in this article was independently verified live at the time of publication.
What we measured: global and regional 5G subscription counts and growth rates; 5G population coverage by region, income group, and urban/rural split; network-level maturity indicators (5G, 5G SA, 5G-Advanced, FWA, private networks); US-specific infrastructure and investment figures; and global capex forecasts.
Limitations:
- Regional taxonomies differ across sources. The ITU’s “Europe,” “Americas,” and “Asia-Pacific” regions do not map one-to-one onto Ericsson’s “Western Europe,” “North America,” and “North East Asia” sub-regions. Our Coverage-to-Adoption Gap analysis uses the closest available matches and states this explicitly rather than presenting a false equivalence.
- CTIA’s Annual Survey is published once per year. The figures above reflect full-year 2024 data published in September 2025; the next edition (full-year 2025 data) is expected around September 2026, which is why we have flagged our next scheduled update for that window.
- All forecast figures (2030, 2031) are vendor/association projections, not guarantees. We report them as published, attributed to their source, without independent verification of the underlying models.
- The Axis Intelligence 5G Capex-to-Connection Index relies on stated assumptions (see the dedicated section above) and should be read as a directional industry benchmark, not a per-market budgeting tool.
About This Dataset
This dataset accompanies the article above and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0) — you are free to share, adapt, and build on it, including commercially, provided you credit Axis Intelligence Research.
- Format: CSV, 56 rows, long-format (one metric per row with source, scope, period, and source URL)
- Update cadence: Quarterly, aligned with GSA’s quarterly State of the Market releases
- Next scheduled update: Q3 2026 (September 2026), incorporating CTIA’s next Annual Survey and Ericsson’s June 2026 Mobility Report edition
- Download the dataset (CSV)
How to cite this dataset
APA: Axis Intelligence Research. (2026). 5G Statistics 2026: Global Adoption, Coverage, Speed, and Investment Data. Axis Intelligence. https://axis-intelligence.com/5g-statistics/
MLA: Axis Intelligence Research. “5G Statistics 2026: Global Adoption, Coverage, Speed, and Investment Data.” Axis Intelligence, 14 June 2026, axis-intelligence.com/5g-statistics/.
Chicago: Axis Intelligence Research. “5G Statistics 2026: Global Adoption, Coverage, Speed, and Investment Data.” Axis Intelligence. Last modified June 14, 2026. https://axis-intelligence.com/5g-statistics/.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many 5G connections are there worldwide in 2026?
Global 5G subscriptions crossed 3.1 billion in Q1 2026, according to the Ericsson Mobility Report June 2026 — up from 2.9 billion at end-2025. The ITU independently estimated “nearly 3 billion” at end-2025, corroborating Ericsson’s trajectory. Ericsson forecasts 6.4 billion subscriptions by end-2031.
What percentage of the world has 5G coverage?
5G networks cover 55% of the global population as of 2025, per the ITU’s Facts and Figures 2025. Coverage is heavily skewed toward wealthier regions: 84% in high-income countries versus 4% in low-income countries.
Which region has the highest 5G adoption rate?
North America leads with 79% 5G subscription penetration as of end-2025 (Ericsson), followed by North East Asia (61%), and Western Europe and the GCC countries (both 55%).
When will 5G overtake 4G as the dominant mobile technology?
Ericsson forecasts 5G will overtake 4G by subscription count before the end of 2027 — nine years after 5G’s commercial launch. By 2031, two-thirds of all mobile subscriptions are expected to be on 5G. 5G already carries 48% of all global mobile data traffic despite being ~33% of subscriptions (Ericsson, June 2026), confirming the demand shift is well underway.
What is 5G Standalone (SA), and how widespread is it?
5G SA uses a fully 5G core network rather than relying on 4G infrastructure, enabling features like network slicing and ultra-low latency. As of Q1 2026, 95 operators have launched 5G SA — up 42% from a year earlier, per GSA.
What is 5G-Advanced, and how does it differ from regular 5G?
5G-Advanced (based on 3GPP Release 18 and beyond) extends 5G with capabilities like RedCap for low-cost IoT, enhanced multicast, and AI-driven network optimization. As of Q1 2026, 35 operators are investing in 5G-Advanced and 11 have a live service, per GSA — a 71% year-over-year increase in investing operators.
How much is the telecom industry investing in 5G infrastructure?
The GSMA projects $1.2 trillion in global mobile industry capex between 2025 and 2030. Axis Intelligence’s cross-source analysis translates this into approximately $567 per net-new 5G connection added in that period — see our Capex-to-Connection Index above for the full calculation and its assumptions.
How many 5G devices are in use in the United States?
The US had 259 million active 5G devices in 2024 — 45% of the country’s 579 million total wireless connections — according to CTIA’s 2025 Annual Survey, up 20% year-over-year.
What is 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA), and how big is it?
5G FWA delivers home or business broadband over a 5G connection instead of fiber or cable. As of Q1 2026, 394 operators worldwide have launched 5G FWA services, and Ericsson forecasts 350 million global FWA subscriptions by 2031.
When will 6G launch, and how does it relate to 5G?
6G standardization (3GPP Release 21, based on ITU’s IMT-2030 framework) is underway, with Ericsson forecasting 180 million 6G subscriptions globally by the end of 2031. 6G is expected to build directly on 5G Standalone’s architecture, adding AI-native network management and integrated sensing capabilities. The US, China, Japan, South Korea, and the GCC countries are expected to launch earliest, given their 5G SA head start.
Cite This Research
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