Wireless is evolving from “best-effort” access to a programmable utility that enables GDP. Mobile already $6.5 trillion (5.8% world GDP) and spectrum policy and 5G/6G road-mapping are pushing this figure beyond limits. weigh out.
Demand keeps compounding. By the end of 2025, 5G was forecast to reach 2.9 billion subscriptions and cover up to one third of the world’s population, as service providers continued to build out their coverage and add use cases powered by slicing and other enterprise services. Wireless mobile data traffic was up by 20% YoY (Q3’24–Q3’25), which confirmed the structural increase of wireless utilisation.
The ecosystem should soon consolidate to roughly three tiers. On the local side of things, performance will be ramping up to Wi-Fi 7 certified levels with improved deterministic latency, higher throughputs, and multi-link technology for home gateways, venues, and enterprise LANs. NTN (which counteracts slow economic force vectors) shows it is global: 81 countries and 173 operator–satellite partnerships have been observed by Aug-2025, many already commercial (GSA). Meantime, the IoT base kept rising in the face of macro headwinds to over 21.1 billion connected devices by 2025.
On the industrial edge, private 5G is scaling the chasm and will grow from $3.86 billion (2025) to $17.55 billion (2030) as factories, ports, mines, and campuses demand consistent latency, security, and mobility.
Key takeaways: Winners will not approach wireless as a radio, but as an operating substrate in which to combine Wi-Fi 7 along with public/private 5G, NTN, and IoT with governed data, AI, and edge compute to deliver measurable outcomes in productivity, safety, and user experience.
