From the early stages of commercialisation in 2019, 5G coverage has expanded to cover 55 per cent of the world’s population in 2025.[1] However, 5G currently reaches 84 per cent of people in high-income countries, but only 4 per cent of people in low-income countries, indicating that growth has been uneven.
Regionally, Europe leads with 74 per cent of the population covered by 5G, followed by the Asia-Pacific region with 70 per cent, and the Americas region with 60 per cent of the population covered by 5G. Coverage remains considerably lower in the Arab States region with 13 per cent, Africa with 12 per cent, and the CIS region with 8 per cent of the population covered by 5G. These disparities in 5G network coverage are mirrored in subscription levels (see Subscriptions section).
While 5G deployment is still underway in many regions, 4G remains a reliable connectivity solution, currently available to 93 per cent of the world’s population. However, in low-income countries, 4G coverage drops sharply, with only 56 per cent of the population covered. In these areas, 3G continues to play a vital role for Internet access.
Coverage by 3G or higher technology has reached 96 per cent of the world’s population. Yet extending networks to the remaining 4 per cent, comprising approximately 312 million people, is proving slow and complex. Since 2018, when coverage first surpassed 90 per cent, the global gain has amounted to just six percentage points. Almost half of the global population that remain without access to a mobile broadband network are in Africa.
In LDCs and LLDCs, 12 and 11 per cent of the population, respectively, remain without access to mobile broadband, a result that falls short of Target 9.c of Sustainable Development Goal 9: “to significantly increase access to information and communications technology and strive to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet in least developed countries by 2020.”
Because urban areas are more densely populated and economically attractive, they are usually prioritized when new infrastructure is deployed. As a result, 66 per cent of people living in urban areas worldwide already have access to a 5G network, compared with just 40 per cent of those in rural areas, representing a gap of 26 percentage points.
In high-income countries, the urban-rural divide is evident with 89 per cent of the urban population covered by 5G, compared with only 59 per cent of the rural population. In low-income countries, 5G reaches only 9 per cent of the urban population and is essentially unavailable in rural areas.
Older technologies are more widely available. 4G networks cover 99 per cent of urban areas worldwide, but coverage drops to 84 per cent in rural areas. However, these global averages conceal vast disparities, such as for example the fact that in low-income countries only 38 per cent of rural inhabitants have access to 4G.
There are still parts of the world where there is either no network coverage at all, or only 2G service. These uncovered areas are exclusively rural, with the affected population ranging from 2 per cent in rural areas of Europe, to 21 per cent in rural areas of the Americas region. In LLDCs, 17 per cent of the rural population remains without network coverage, while in LDCs the share is 19 per cent. The widest coverage gap is in rural areas of SIDS, where 36 per cent of the population still lacks mobile broadband access.
[1] In this publication, the term 4G is used instead of 4G/LTE, and 5G instead of 5G/IMT-2020, for readability.