Since the early days of the latest generation of mobile infrastructure, fixed wireless access (FWA) has been one of the fastest growing and most important use cases for 5G networks, with a GSA 4G/5G Fixed Wireless Access Forum study predicting that 5G FWA customer premises equipment (CPE) shipments will grow 23% to 37.5 million units in 2024, representing 42% of all FWA CPE shipments.
The GSA 4G/5G Fixed Wireless Access Forum was founded in late 2020 with 14 initial partners and members and now has 56 members, covering most of the FWA infrastructure, chipsets, modules and CPE value chain. The association: 2024 GSA Fixed Wireless Access CPE Market Study “Prove beyond doubt” that 5G FWA has gone mainstream.
The survey results present aggregated responses from 30 CPE suppliers, representing a significant representation of the 3GPP-based 4G/5G FWA device market. All companies are members of the GSA 4G/5G FWA Forum and were surveyed from May to June 2024 on a range of topics including shipments, market trends, form factors, device capabilities, current and future.
Key findings show that after 5G-enabled FWA shipments reach 10.2 million units in 2023, growth in 5G FWA CPE shipments is expected to accelerate further, increasing 8 percentage points from 34% in 2023. In comparison, 4G FWA CPE shipments are expected to decline 5% between 2022 and 2023, and the survey showed that less than half of respondents expect to deploy new 4G CPE products this year. According to 40% of respondents, 5G CPE is expected to reach price parity with 4G CPE by 2026, one year later than last year’s survey.
Indoor CPE, accounting for 60% of all such products, will dominate the shipment type, followed by battery-powered hotspots (25%) and outdoor CPE (15%). For outdoor CPE, flexible self-install devices are expected to grow from 1.6 million to 1.9 million units, despite a slight decrease in shipment share from 36% to 34% from 2023 to 2024. Most respondents expect window-mounted CPE and self-install apps to increase, flexible indoor and outdoor CPE to remain stable, and hybrid fiber and DSL CPE to decrease.
Three-fifths of 2023 shipments, or 6 million units, will support 5G Standalone, a figure expected to reach 8.9 million in 2024. Interest in RedCap is also strong, with 63% of respondents saying they plan to deploy 5G RedCap CPE in 2024.
Shipments of mmWave-enabled 5G devices are projected to grow 63% from 2022 to 2023 and 22% by 2024, but will still account for less than 10% of total 5G shipments.
Interestingly, the 5G FWA CPE market was shown to be expanding its regional base: the study found that various regions are driving the growth of 5G FWA shipments in 2023, in contrast to 2022, when most of the shipments were concentrated in North America. India is currently contributing to this upward trend in shipments, with 86% of reported shipments being 5G-enabled, followed by North America (65%) and the rest of Asia Pacific (39%).
“Not only is vendor shipment growth heavily dependent on 5G-enabled CPE devices, operators are beginning to look to FWA as a key driver for monetizing their 5G network investments,” said John Yazur, vice chairman of the GSA 4G/5G FWA Forum.
“We believe operators and vendors will continue to collaborate on new innovations such as 5G standalone, Redcap, mmWave and flexible self-installed outdoor CPE to support the accelerated growth of 5G fixed wireless access services globally.”
