Networking giant Ericsson has predicted that 5G will reach 20 percent of the global population as of 2023, with 1 billion subscriptions to be held by then.

LTE coverage had reached 55 percent of the world's population by 2016, with Ericsson predicting that it will reach 85 percent by 2023. In total, 3GPP cellular technologies have reached 95 percent of the global population.

Ericsson also found that there are now 5 billion mobile broadband subscriptions in total across the globe after 95 million new subscriptions were added during the third quarter of 2017: 1.56 billion in APAC, 1.395 billion in China, 1.185 billion in India, 1.015 billion in Africa, 700 million in Latin America, 585 million in Central and Eastern Europe, 520 million in Western Europe, 425 million in the Middle East, and 380 million in North America.

Mobile traffic is forecast to increase by eightfold during the same period, to reach 110 exabytes per month by 2023, Ericsson said, adding that this will be driven by streaming video in increasingly higher resolutions, as well as by 360-degree viewing solutions.