Operators’ 5G investments show no clear signs of paying off
Over the past few years, big wireless network operators all over the globe have spent billions of dollars building speedy 5G networks. But so far most have little to show for their efforts.
And some analysts are beginning to worry that things are just going to get worse.
“Absent any new way of using our phones then the most data intensive usage is video, and there are only so many hours a day when anyone wants to watch video on a mobile device,” wrote analyst William Webb, of Access Partnership, in a LinkedIn post. “Of course, radical new applications are always possible, but none are likely for mass adoption in the next few years.”
Meaning, 4G is mostly good enough for today’s mobile users.
Others agree. “New 5G mobile services have failed to materialize,” wrote the financial analysts at LightShed Partners in a recent assessment of the US market.
A slowdown in usage
Perhaps the most worrying numbers come from Tefficient. For years, the analyst firm has tracked global mobile data traffic across 46 countries. Its latest findings show that mobile users in general aren’t showing as much demand for mobile data as they have in the past.
“In our previous reports we could see that the pandemic drove the mobile data usage. But during the second half of 2021, the demand for more mobile data slowed,” the firm wrote in its latest report. “And this trend continues into the first half of 2022.”
But there’s even more concerning news for global operators. Tefficient reported that most operators around the world haven’t been able to increase their average revenues per user (ARPU) in recent months. Meaning, operators in general aren’t earning any more revenues from whatever demand they’ve managed to generate.
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