According to Ericsson, mobile operators that take a proactive approach to monetising 5G have a great opportunity to achieve a 2.7% CAGR through 2030.

Ericsson MD for ANZ Emilio Romeo revealed a preview of research suggesting that bundling 5G with rich media services can provide the best avenue for achieving the full potential from the extensive 5G investment of operators.

In comparison to non-5G users, 5G subscribers are spending three times as long using any kind of augmented reality (AR) applications and about 4.2 times as long using any kind of virtual reality (VR) applications. In addition to this, 5G subscribers are also spending more than twice as long on cloud gaming on smartphones.

“What the study is telling us is that by 2025 cloud gaming is estimated to be the biggest source of 5G enabled immersive media services revenue,” Romeo stated. “It also tells us that consumers will spend one hour or more per week on cloud gaming. That's great if you can monetise it.”

According to Romeo, the same research revealed that consumers are willing to pay a premium price for emerging 5G applications such as AR-enhanced shopping, interactive calling, immersive learning, and 5G in-car entertainment.

“But having the technology and the applications and the speed is not enough. Our experience over the last few years shows us that we really, really need innovative pricing models to really leverage some of the monetisation possibilities [of 5G].”

“But the operators we've seen are getting the most benefit out of this opportunity are those that are bringing in some rich media services as a differentiator above the other services they are offering,” Romeo further added.

In South Korea, operators have managed to achieve a 23% ARPU increase by bundling immersive media services with 5G offerings, managing to reverse a trend of declining ARPU. “Australia is no different. We're seeing the network technology leadership is really helping our customers drive the 5G premium,” he then said.

“We are really in an enviable position in Australia. We now have the trifecta on the spectrum, being able to launch low, mid, and high bands [5G]. We have three live networks, we have over 50% of the population coverage.”

He also cited recent GSMA statistics showing that the median 5G download speed in Australia is 280Mbps. This is double the global average download speed of 142Mbps. “[At Ericsson] we've had three world firsts with three different customers in just the last six months - we had the record speed for mmWave which was about 5Gbps with Telstra, with Optus we launched the first dual-band 2300MHz-3500MHz network. And with NBN, we launched the longest range for millimeter waves of 7.3km. That is huge,” he concluded.