According to a report by GSMA, Asia Pacific mobile operators will invest over $400 billion on their networks between 2020 and 2025. Of this, around $331 billion is expected to be spent on 5G deployments.
The report highlighted that the region is one of the fastest-growing in the world and home to over half of the total global subscribers and contains some of the advanced 5G markets globally.
As of end 2019, 2.8 billion people in the region subscribed to mobile services, accounting for 66 per cent of the population, with nearly 500 million new subscribers added since 2014.
Going forward, GSMA expects Asia Pacific to account for around half of new subscribers globally by 2025, with the addition of new 266 million subscribers by the time.
That said, the effect of COVID-19 pandemic on 5G growth is expected to be greater in the Asia Pacific and as per GSMA’s revised forecasts, the total number of 5G connections is expected to be 20 per cent lower in 2020 in the Asia Pacific than previous estimates.
