Ericsson’s Optimistic Forecast for India
Ericsson’s June 2025 Mobility Report paints a highly optimistic picture of global 5G expansion, with India as a central figure in this projected growth. The report forecasts that India will reach 980 million 5G subscribers by 2030, up from 290 million in 2024, and that the average monthly data usage per subscriber will nearly double from 32 GB to 62 GB in the same timeframe. It places significant emphasis on Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) as a game-changing use case, suggesting that India will be a key driver in this trend.
The Blind Spot: Lack of SA and Low-Band Spectrum
However, this bullish outlook fails to account for critical structural limitations in India’s telecom ecosystem—most notably the lack of low-band spectrum and Standalone (SA) 5G network rollouts. Ericsson’s vision of monetising 5G through advanced use cases like network slicing, indoor performance enhancement, and deterministic uplink support rests heavily on the availability of SA core networks supported by carrier aggregation across low- and mid-band frequencies.
