The global mobile connections will total ten billion by 2023, according to forecasts provided by Ovum. Also, by the end of 2023, global 5G connections are expected to reach 1.3 billion.

The growth of LTE will be continuing, as LTE added 239 million connections worldwide in the third quarter of 2018. Ovum forecasts that LTE will continue to grow well into 2022 and we will see a decline in subscriptions beginning around 2023 due to 5G growth. Regardless, GSM, HSPA and LTE will still be deployed worldwide in 2023.

LTE is forecasted to continue its momentum at worldwide, reaching 6 billion connections in 2022, at which time LTE market share will stand at 61 percent. New LTE deployments and upgrades continue and as of mid-December TeleGeography (GlobalComm) reported 624 LTE commercial networks worldwide, while 282 of those operators have evolved to LTE-Advanced.