Telecom and tech headlines would like you to believe that 5G is yesterday’s news and 6G is right at your doorstep. However, on closer inspection, it becomes rather obvious that 5G is only midway through its deployment and monetisation curve.
In late 2024, almost 54% of the global population was covered under a 5G network, according to ITU and GSMA-linked analyses. Ericsson claimed that almost 2.3 billion people had a 5G subscription in late 2024, and that number was going to hit 2.9 billion by the end of 2025. This represents massive growth, amounting to about one-third of all mobile subscriptions on Earth. Most experts believe that, even by 2030, 5G is going to be the dominant mobile tech, accounting for 57% of all connections with over 6.3 to 6.4 billion subscribers worldwide.
Of course, there is a massive global inequality in access to data.
Regions that are technologically advanced and economically well-off, like North America, Northeast Asia, and parts of the GCC, have seen 5G penetration that exceeds 60-70% of mobile subscriptions. In poorer regions with poverty and conflict, such as Africa and low-income Asia, the coverage is still in single digits.
GSM estimates that 3.1 billion people still do not use 4G or 5G despite living within a coverage area. The situation highlights the ’usage gap’, which is primarily driven by challenges related to affordability, high device costs, and a lack of digital skills.
Ericsson had estimated 394 million 5G subscribers by the end of 2025 in India (32% of total mobile subscriptions). Astonishingly, 5G coverage area in India is already accessible to about 90% of the population, and prepaid smartphone data usage was over 30 GB per month in 2025, which is the highest in the world.
Operators are not as enthusiastic as they were before. Dell’Oro Group reports that global telecom capex began declining in 2023, with a steeper 8% drop materialising in 2024. This was the first sustained decline since 2017. It occurred because carriers slowed down on their 5G investments due to flat revenues.
The slowdown didn’t stop there. It continued throughout 2024, with the world telecom capex falling 10% year-on-year in the first half. Analysts now believe the decline is stabilising, with capex broadly flat year-on-year through 2025, and modest recovery expected through 2026, rather than a continued negative CAGR.
Also, 5G providers in North America and other advanced economies are convinced that the initial 5G build-out wave is at its pinnacle, and further expansion will not yield expected profits.
Why has the 6G race started so early?
The race has started early, not because 5G isn’t enough, or because it failed, or because it’s not profitable, but because developing a new technology is a decade-long commitment at the very least. It takes a long time for R&D and commercial launch, and no major player in the market wants to feel left behind.
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) designates 6G as IMT-2030, following 5G’s IMT-2020 framework. The International Telecommunication Union is the global rule maker for mobile networks. It is the organisation that gives a code name to every generation of mobile technology and sets technical standards that companies must meet.
A group of radio experts working at the ITU, known as Working Party 5D, have already agreed on a draft list of performance goals for 6G. These objectives focus on how fast the speeds will be, how low the delay or latency will be, and how many devices can connect at once.
Different companies across the world will propose their own 6G radio technologies to the ITU from 2027. The ITU will test and evaluate its proposals against the minimum requirements that were proposed between 2027 and 2029, and officially standardise the technology in 2030 before a global launch.
In short, we’ll have a working 6G that can be used by everyone around 2030. ITU Secretary-General Doreen Bogdan-Martin has framed the stakes plainly: “By agreeing on a way forward on 6G, ITU member states have taken an important step toward ensuring that technical progress is synonymous with affordability, security, and resilience, supporting sustainable development and digital transformation everywhere.”
On the other side of the technology is 3GPP, which is an industrial body that proposes specifications for cellular systems on your devices. The organisation is trying to realign its roadmap to meet ITU’s pace.
In 2024, Release 18 was complete, marking the beginning of advanced 5G, and the development of Release 19 and Release 20. Major vendors like Ericsson believed that 6G-related R&D would begin with Release 19, and expand into 20 and 21, with concrete 6G specifications targeted around 2028, enabling commercial launch around 2030. Companies don’t want to substitute 5G with 6G in one swift move. They’re looking at a smoother, refined upgrade where 5G-Advanced and early 6G work in tandem. It’s when 5G slowly matures and evolves into 6G.
Ericsson CEO Börje Ekholm said, “I encourage you not to think of 6G as a normal new generation. The 6G, if you think about it as a technology, will probably get introduced around 2030 as an evolution of 5G, not a wholesale replacement.”
The 6G networks will be able to communicate and sense (which means that they can see and sense the environment, not just send data). It has been made possible by building AI and machine learning directly into networks to manage traffic and boost performance more smartly. This could make telecom exponentially more profitable because it is going to use less energy per bit of data.
In November 2025, Ericsson published a mobility report suggesting that 6G deployments could appear in 2030 in pioneering markets, such as the US, Japan, South Korea, China, India, and GCC nations. It will arrive in Europe a year later. ITU’s own IMT-2030 timeline is congruent with early developments at the end of the decade, once the standard is signed off and presented.
Money and the new tech race
Another reason why 6G is getting such a powerful push is that governments look at 6G the same way they look at semiconductors and AI. It’s a crucial technology, and they don’t want to make the same mistakes they did in the 5G era.
One of the most successful pioneers of the technology is China. Its IMT-2030 (6G) Promotion Group, which was established in 2019, helps operators, government, vendors, and academia coordinate seamlessly. There are claims that China has already poured $5 billion into 6G-related R&D funding. Among Chinese companies, Huawei is the most aggressive in pushing for patents and standardising bodies. Huawei alone filed more than 12,000 6G-related patent applications, which is by far the largest any single entity has filed.
The 6G drive in the US is founded on their strength in chip software and cloud, with the Next G Alliance under ATIS convening partners, hyperscalers, and vendors to execute a coordinated national strategy. Public funding exceeding $3 billion has been funnelled into these programmes through organisations such as the NSF, DARPA, and various CHIPS-related initiatives.
The stakes have been made explicit at the highest level of government. A White House National Security Presidential Memorandum issued in December 2025, titled Winning the 6G Race, stated, “The next generation of mobile communications networks (6G) will be foundational to the national security, foreign policy, and economic prosperity of the United States. It is the policy of the United States to lead the world in 6G development.”
The investment aims to synchronise wireless technology with AI, edge cloud, and secure open RAN architectures to ensure continued US leadership across the broader digital stack.
Among the three major global O-RAN members, two are in Europe, namely Nokia and Ericsson, which are leveraging their traditional strengths in R&D for the European 6G push. Hexa-X and Hexa-X2 are flagship projects under Horizon Europe that coordinate Pan-EU 6G research, supported by an EU commitment of over €900 million for 6G-related programmes, and a call for an additional €100 million in funding for 2025 alone.
Through these initiatives, Brussels views 6G as a vital means to achieve digital sovereignty and sustainability while addressing European priorities regarding infrastructure, energy efficiency and, most importantly, privacy by design.
In the Far East, Japan and South Korea are striving to maintain their status as wireless powerhouses through several strategic initiatives. Japan’s ’Beyond 5G’ Promotion Consortium is synchronising major operators and vendors like NTT and NTT DoCoMo, supported by multi-year R&D funds exceeding ¥66 billion and various grants.
Additionally, Japan and the United States have launched a joint $4.5 billion initiative to co-develop 6G technologies. Meanwhile, South Korea is leveraging its early lead in 5G and dense urban markets to position itself as a pilot zone for 6G and emerging technologies, such as holographic communications and integrated sensing.
India had also accelerated its 5G rollout into a fast two-year window, and doesn’t want to miss the 6G window either. The government has announced a Bharat 6G Alliance, and participates in international 6G collaborations led by major vendors.
Dr. Neeraj Mittal, Secretary of the Department of Telecommunications, has outlined the timeline: “Developing a skilled workforce and collaborating with global academic institutions will be critical as we implement 6G over the next six to eight years.”
India is forecasted to have more than a billion 5G subscribers by 2031. Because 5G penetration is over 50%, it makes an attractive testbed for low-cost, high-density 6G architectures with spectrum and investment policies assigned.
Beyond hype and into business logic
For operators and vendors, the 6G push is important. They want to keep innovation happening, which would give them an advantage over their competition. However, the transition is going to be more complex than one “g” immediately transforming into another.
In 3GPP Release 18, Release 19, and Release 20, 5G is advancing as planned and is unlocking advanced capabilities, which will be the foundation stones of 6G. In Release 18 in particular, there have been powerful enhancements, including network slicing, improved support for time-sensitive industrial communications, tighter integration of AI for radio optimisation, and better energy efficiency. Releases that will follow will expand on these capabilities while also building integrated sensing and support for non-terrestrial networks, such as satellites and high-altitude platforms, which are integral to the 6G equation.
So far, 5G hasn’t proven to create revenue opportunities, aside from the fact that smartphones are slightly faster.
Alok Shah, VP of Networks Strategy at Samsung Electronics America, acknowledged this unpredictability in March 2024.
He noted, “Technology continues to improve, performance in the network continues to improve, and what’s always happened in prior generations is we build a network, we think we know some of the interesting use cases, we’re usually wrong about that, and something else becomes what really expands the value of networks for operators.”
Peter Jarich, Head of GSMA Intelligence, was even more direct at the ETTelecom 5G/6G Congress.
He said, “The promise of 5G was that it was going to unlock new revenues and new capabilities that we could monetise. As we have seen across the world, we haven’t quite done that.”
Dell’Oro claims global carrier revenues will rise by 1% CAGR over the next few years. However, operators are already facing rising spectrum, energy, and maintenance costs.
To navigate this crisis, operators are leaning on software-centric, cloud-native networks, which could be later upgraded from 5G Advanced to 6G through software and modular hardware, instead of another rip-and-replace cycle. Moving towards 6G allows vendors to map out the migration path and reduce confusion on design well in advance.
In this sense, the early 6G narrative is partly a hedge. It tells investors and policymakers that the industry has a roadmap beyond the current capex slowdown, even as much of the near-term value will have to be wrung from 5G and 5G-Advanced over the remainder of the decade.
What 6G push really means
In all practicality, most enterprises will be investing in 5G and 5G Advanced in the next 5-7 years. By 2027, 5G will overtake 4G as a dominant technology worldwide, but only after 9 years since its commercial debut.
ITU and GSMA are confident that by 2030, the majority of mobile connections will be under 5G, and 6G adopters will be mostly wealthy and highly urbanised markets. Smart factory upgrades, logistics tracking, and FWA-based branch connectivity will all be done with 5G and 5G-Advanced technology, and not with 6G in the 2020s.
However, 6G is still going to pique the interest of governments and investors because of its surveillance capabilities and energy efficiency.
Organisations that build infrastructure meant to last for decades believe that their new industrial campuses, ports, and transportation corridors should take into account the technology of the future so that they don’t become stuck in bottlenecks a decade from now.
Investors need to parse the 6G narrative carefully. It is very unlikely that 6G will trigger an immediate global CapEx supercycle in the early 2030s. Instead, we’ll be seeing a slow, staggered, software-driven upgrade path, with early 6G appearing as an extension of 5G Advanced in some leading markets before broader global expansion. The move will benefit vendors and operators with strong software, AI, and cloud integration capabilities, rather than those focusing completely on hardware.
Finally, there is a policy and inclusion angle to take into account. The UN and GSMA figures show that 5G coverage surpasses 50% of the global population, but low-income countries remain far behind with only 4% of them having 5G access in 2024. If corporations and governments focus on 6G branding while neglecting affordable devices, local content, and basic 4G or 5G coverage, it could exacerbate the digital divide even further.
If 6G research priorities also include energy efficiency, low-cost device categories, and flexible architectures, it could ultimately support emerging markets and be more inclusive in connectivity. Businesses are focusing on 5G in the near term, but they are building their infrastructure around 6G deployments so they can seamlessly make that generational transition.