5G service expansion to drive APAC mobile services market

Growing 5G availability in the region will increase the market’s revenue to $479b

The increasing mobile data subscription in the Asia Pacific is expected to drive the growth of total mobile communications services revenue in the region, says data and analytics firm GlobalData.

According to its Asia-Pacific Mobile Broadband Forecast Pack (Q3 2023), the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) is estimated to increase by 8% from $326.2b in 2023 to $479.1b in 2028.

The report also revealed that mobile data services will remain the largest revenue-contributing segment of the overall mobile services market in the region during the forecast period. This is due to the expansion and increasing adoption of high-average revenue per user (ARPU) 5G services across several countries.

GlobalData Telecom Analyst Srikanth Vaidya said operators such as Dialog and Airtel in Sri Lanka, and Grameenphone, Robi and Teletalk in Bangladesh are gearing up for the rollout of 5G service in their respective countries by 2024.

Government support for 5G expansion will also strengthen the mobile data services market in the APAC region. For instance, telecom regulatory bodies and governing authorities in South Korea, Japan, Australia, China, and Taiwan have launched national 5G strategies or action plans, outlining the vision and guidelines to establish 5G ecosystems.

These policies include public sector investments in 5G applications, favourable tax incentives and deductions, forums for industry-government collaboration, promotion of 5G led-technological innovations, and license arrangements to enhance spectrum use and reuse.

For instance, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) recently announced plans to deploy 2.9 million 5G base stations by the end of 2023 and 3.6 million by 2025 to expand 5G service coverage to rural areas and industrial parks.

China is currently the largest 5G market in the world with an estimated 1.5 billion 5G subscriptions in 2023. With the investments and regulatory efforts to expand the network in the country, this is set to go up to 3.3 billion by the end of 2028.

“APAC has become the centre of a technological race for 5G+ supremacy. South Korea, Japan, and China have gone beyond just the deployment of 5G to the development of the wider 5G ecosystem. This also means supporting the vast electronics manufacturing and ICT industries in these countries,” Vaidya said.