Global 5G Connections for Year-End 2025 Split 2.7 to 3+ Billion Across Telecom Trackers

Findings

• Four independent telecom trackers each published a total for global 5G connections at or near year-end 2025: GSMA Intelligence reports 2.7 billion (The State of 5G 2026), Ericsson reports 2.9 billion (Mobility Report, Nov 2025), 5G Americas/Omdia reports 2.8 billion for Q3 2025, and Omdia's own connectivity-revenue report puts the figure just past 3.0 billion for full-year 2025 -- a roughly 300-400 million connection gap among trackers measuring nearly the same window.
• Timing partly explains the gap: 5G Americas' 2.8B figure is a Q3 2025 snapshot -- its final published number before the association's February 2026 dissolution -- while GSMA's, Ericsson's, and Omdia's totals are meant to represent full-year 2025, yet even the two year-end figures (GSMA 2.7B vs Omdia 3.0B+) diverge by roughly 10%.
• All four trackers agree on the direction and pace of growth -- 5G added several hundred million connections during 2025 and now accounts for roughly a third of global mobile subscriptions -- the disagreement is confined to the precise total, not the underlying trend.
• Whether a tracker folds 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) connections into its headline mobile total appears to be part of the definitional gap: Omdia separately tracks 5G FWA as a fast-growing category (71 million in 2024, projected 150 million by 2030), and how that segment is counted likely shifts each tracker's reported total.