Despite a global pandemic, various national bans on one of the leading suppliers, and even mast arson triggered by conspiracy theories[1], 5G has had a good year, according to Ericsson[2]. The Swedish telecoms giant's latest research shows that, far from slowing down, the technology is picking up pace in 2020. By the end of the year, in fact, more than one billion people worldwide will be living in an area that is covered by a 5G signal.
At about 15% of the global population, this level of coverage is a significant step up from the state of things at the end of 2019, when the global 5G population coverage stood around 5%. There are, however, major regional differences, with the US, South Korea, China and Switzerland leading growth.
South Korea, for example, is aiming for nationwide coverage in 2021, and Switzerland has deployed 5G networks to 90% of its population. The UK, on the other hand, was recently labeled "average"[3] by Ericsson for 5G deployments, with only about 30% of the population covered by faster networks.
SEE: 5G smartphones: A cheat sheet (free PDF)[4] (TechRepublic)
"On a global scale, there are countries like China that are driving development," Patrik Cerwall, head of strategic marketing insights at Ericsson, who edited the report, told ZDNet. "There, we didn't see that the pandemic had an impact on rollout at all."
"If we look at the rest of the world, however, we saw some delays in Western Europe, mostly due to regulatory issues, and auctions that were postponed," he continued.
France, Austria, Spain and Portugal, for example, all had to postpone key spectrum auctions for 5G due to the global health crisis.
The slower rollout of 5G networks in Europe is directly