Where it comes to supply and demand, pundits often assume that slower 5G uptake is to be blamed on supply, not demand. That is not necessarily the case. Subscriber levels for 4G in a few European countries have always been below what we might expect, and availability cannot, at this point, be the main culprit.
Some might point to lagging 5G uptake and suspect that supply issues are at work.
Customer demand also shapes uptake. Nearly half of all German mobile subscriptions appear to use 3G, instead of 4G. nearly a decade after 4G was introduced, according to a study by Opensignal.
Governments and policymakers always are quick to quantify supply-based gaps in uptake, quality or availability of communications services, which is among the reasons stories about any form of digital divide are evergreen.
Most often, studies about service gaps rely on supply or demand indices, including network availability, typical speeds and cost.
Demand side choices by consumers tend to be overlooked. In other words, some “gaps” might reflect consumer choices, not failures of supply. And that matters for 5G, as much as it did for 4G.
We often are surprised at the resilience of legacy services, as those use of legacy services is always a case of supply failure. Not always. Sometimes demand choices are at work. In other words, a huge percentage of German mobile users seem to be opting to remain on 3G networks even when 4G networks now are in good supply, with good performance metrics.
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