5G delivery not meeting consumer expectations - Ericsson

The latest ConsumerLab study by Swedish kit vendor Ericsson has found many 5G phone owners either don’t have a 5G subscription or expect more innovative services and apps.

Ericsson says this is the largest 5G consumer study to date, which it reckons represents the opinions of 1.3 billion users and 220 million 5G users, thanks to covering 26 countries last December. The focus of the study was to get a sense of what impact 5G is having on said consumers and what their expectations are of what the latest generation of mobile tech will bring to the table.

Compared to the report it published a couple of years ago, Ericsson found global consumer intention to upgrade to 5G had increased by two percentage points. If you think that seems low the reason is that some countries, Including China, Indonesia and France, actually went into reverse. For some reason, fewer people in many countries now intend to upgrade to 5G. Ericsson reckons that still means around 300 million people could upgrade this year, though.

There seems to be a fair bit of confusion about how and why to get onto 5G. 22% of consumers who have a 5G-ready phone are still on a 4G tariff, implying their providers are doing a bad job of either network rollout or up-selling. Furthermore 4% of punters reckon they’re on a 5G plan when they’re not, with only 4% actually living the 5G dream.

The report also reckons 5G uptake drive other consumer behaviour, it’s hard to tell how much of that correlation is the result of causation. Surely it’s just as possible that people who already have an exceptional appetite for mobile data are those most likely to be 5G early adopters. Regardless of the reason, here’s how much more mobile mucking about 5G users get up to than their 4G equivalents.

It turned out that no less than 70% of respondents are dissatisfied with the availability of innovative services and expect new apps that can take advantage of 5G. Once more the report urges service providers to raise their game on 5G and suggests that highlighting new use-cases, rather than speeds-and-feeds, is the way forward.