Observers breathlessly sure that 5G is going to have huge impact on consumers, apps or services are likely going to be quite disappointed in the near term. But that is the nature of big technology introductions. The benefits take quite some time, oftentimes a decade or even two decades, to show clearly what the impact has been.
To the extent that 5G follows the 4G adoption pattern, in a decade most consumers will be using 5G, but not all. That has tended to be the case in many markets since the time of 2G. Though it can take a decade to reach nearly 100 percent adoption, 2G take rates reached close to 100 percent in as few as five years.
Adoption of 3G, on the other hand, tended to take a decade to reach 30 percent to 60 percent, in European countries, for example.
4G took about a decade to reach 80 percent adoption. If 5G gets adopted at about the same rate as 4G, we should see 5G adoption rates of about 80 percent by 2030.
Within 10 years, though, we will be moving into the early stages of the 6G era. Consider the example of gigabit internet access.
What has changed, in terms of productivity and benefits, since gigabit internet access “became a thing” about 2011? To be sure, in the U.S. market cable operators now routinely offer gigabit internet access to their customers.
Few seem to buy it. In fact, perhaps two percent of consumers actually buy a gigabit per second service. Of course, within a decade, a majority of consumers in the U.S. market will be using 5G, so the scale of use offers more hope that material advantages could develop.
We might, or might not, see tangible results from high 5G uptake in five years or so, possibly in the consumer segment and possibly in the enterprise segment. What needs to be kept in mind that is that near-term results, in the first few years of introduction, will not be enough time to make an assessment.
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