By 2025, 5G service revenues will exceed $65 billion globally, compared to just $100 million during its first year of commercial services in 2020, according to a report by Juniper Networks.

This figure would represent approximately 7% of all operator-billed service revenues.

Juniper notes that while the first commercial roll outs are expected in 2020, widespread adoption will only occur from 2025, with national spectrum licensing occurring over a period of years as per 4G.

In fact, Juniper predicts active 4G LTE connections will exceed three billion globally by 2020. The new research, '5G Market Strategies: 4G LTE Evolution, Spectrum Analysis - Opportunities 2015-2025', observed that there is a growing consensus around the development of 5G standards in terms of both technology and performance aspects.

The ‘5G vision' includes key requisites such as network speeds of at least 10Gbps, 1ms latency or less, improved spectral efficiency, low energy consumption, better battery life, higher device density - along with improved reliability and flexibility.

Juniper Research found that 5G will not only enable faster connections but will act as a catalyst for a wide range of new consumer and enterprise experiences, including both data intensive and energy efficient applications, high definition 4K-8K video, self-driving cars, advanced virtual reality, and a sensory/tactile Internet - constantly monitoring and controlling.

Furthermore, Juniper estimates that at least $25 billion will be invested into 5G technology research, trials and development over the next five years.

Also noted was that operators will need to consider multiple service deployment scenarios to achieve an adequate ROI (Return on Investment) from their network and license investments.

“These discrete segments or services will require transparent and competitive pricing based on data usage, device type, and speeds; this means that profit margins will vary with regards to the sector enabled,” says Nitin Bhas, Juniper Research report author.