5G has been the fastest industry deployment, with more than two billion subscriptions in the six years of its commercial availability, yet the transformative power of full 5G remains largely untapped and will take the mass deployment of 5G Standalone to unlock 5G’s revolutionary potential, according to a whitepaper from Ericsson.
The Next wave of mobile innovation paper – written by Ericsson chief technology officer Erik Ekudden and mobile industry strategy consultant Chetan Sharma – presents the view that while the global roll-out of 5G has been unprecedented in speed, the true value lies in how deeply the technology is embedded into the industrial fabric of the global economies, with the real story of 5G’s impact set to be written in factories, ports, mines, energy grids, logistics hubs and research labs across the globe.
The paper discusses the strategic roadmap with actionable pathways for wireless industry leaders to capture maximum market value between 2025- 2030, while establishing the essential foundation for 6G leadership. It highlights global examples of 5G-driven successes spanning sectors.
The paper warns that the “staggering” 42% growth in overall 5G subscribers in 2024 creates a dangerous illusion of progress as only 26% of global operators – 163 out of 6,332 – have invested in standalone (SA) 5G, which the authors regard as the architecture that unlocks the full capabilities of the technology. They add that, without SA, operators are leaving value on the table: automation at scale, ultra-low latency, network slicing and mission-critical reliability.
And this isn’t just a technology gap – the authors describe it as “a strategic chasm that’s reshaping global competitiveness”, warning that with over 90% of SA customers concentrated in just three markets – China, India and the US – entire regions are being left behind in the race for next-generation digital infrastructure.
They added that the operators and nations moving decisively on SA today aren’t just building networks, they’re securing their position in the future economy while their competitors remain trapped in yesterday’s technology, mistaking 5G marketing for 5G reality.
Drilling down into use cases, the report shows how in industrial applications, 5G marks an important departure from earlier mobile technology cycles, where the emphasis is now as much on new access technologies as on the transformation of the core network. The paper sees the biggest opportunity in front of the industry is automation at scale where 5G has an important role to play.
It notes that service provider evolution is aligning well with enterprises who move from basic to significantly advanced automation, compute and connectivity solutions for whom the clear intention is that the more they automate, the higher the efficiency gains. It stressed how 5G is already being integrated into various facets of the enterprise supply chain and that from basic connectivity to a full suite of applications that run on 5G, the market for enterprise 5G for the mobile operators is already several billion dollars.
A key example is 5G in emerging sectors such as cloud robotics, which use the capabilities of cloud computing, AI, robotics with 5G networks and which are poised to significantly influence both corporate and consumer electronics sectors.
According to the report, the key lesson from 5G diffusion is decisive: national strength in general-purpose technologies comes from being fastest and most capable at scaling them across the economy. As the world moves toward 6G, the countries that will lead are those already laying the groundwork today – investing in comprehensive ecosystems that unite policy, capital and industrial integration. For them, the story of 5G will not be about the number of towers built, but about the number of industries transformed.
