5G Coverage Assures Explosive Growth of Live Dealer Casinos for the Remainder of the 2020's
One of the greatest innovations in the world of gaming involves the online live dealer casino. Individuals can essentially enjoy the brick and mortar casino experience without ever leaving their bed, and that includes winning real money.
The technology has been around for a very long time in terms of the development. But it's like electric cars. If you don't have the infrastructure and facilities in place, who cares how well the car functions?
Case in point, as soon as Q4 2024, new vehicles outside of Tesla will also start coming equipped with NACS charge ports and have access to the Tesla supercharging stations, much to the chagrin of Tesla owners.
Our dear late friend Adam Anhang was a pioneer in the live dealer online casino space back in the late 1990's and early 2000's. But if you happened to live outside a major city or internet hub, forget about being able to load the casino. It would also routinely crash. The internet speeds were not equipped to handle this tech rich platform. We're seeing a lot of these same issues with virtual reality gaming today.
Technology has caught up with live casino games, to an extent. Just as most of us probably wouldn't get away with using an iPhone 5 these days, 4G internet will soon go the way of the dodo bird. These online casino platforms will rely solely on 5G.
In 2022, around one tenth of all connections worldwide used 5G technology, but we probably won't reach beyond one half by the end of this decade.
Let's look at some of the regions around the globe to see how 5G technology is coming along.
Europe
In the Nordic countries and some Eastern European markets (including Bulgaria and Cyprus) 5G outperformed the big 5 European economies (U.K., Germany, France, Spain, and Italy) as we entered this decade.
By 2021, remarkably, the online gambling hub of Malta was one of just three EU nations that had not launched a 5G network. Portugal and Lithuania were the other two.
And, as of March 2024, one of Europe's largest cities, London, lagged the rest of Europe. It ranked 10th for 5G quality of experience on the continent.
We should note that Germany and Italy had surpassed 90% 5G coverage entering 2024.
North America, Latin America
5G penetration in North America was coming in at 61 percent. This includes the US and Canada, two of the most highly sought after markets for live dealer casino operators.
The region experienced a “staggering” 64% year-over-year (YoY) growth in 5G connections, adding 77 million new connections to its network, according to 5G Americas.
José Otero, vice-president of Latin America and the Caribbean for 5G Americas, added: “4G LTE is still the strongest technology across the region, although various factors, including 5G handset mass market availability and completion of spectrum auctions will see an increase in 5G coverage, and subscriber growth in the coming year.”
Asia, Australia, New Zealand
India's 5G network reached only 11 percent of the population. The high cost of smartphones and the lack of specific 5G services has resulted in slow growth.
More than 800 million Chinese mobile connections are already 5G with half the country expected to be using the technology by the end of this year. Whether one can access an online casino here is a different story that has little to do with technology.
Some 95% of the Japanese population was to be equipped with 5G by this month (April 2024).
By 2026, 90% of the population in South Korea was expected to have access to these networks.
The Vodafone 5G network in Australia is available to some 85% of those in the nation's largest cities.
Some networks in New Zealand, meanwhile claim to cover nearly 100 percent of that island nation.
Africa
5G coverage throughout the continent is still mostly limited to major cities, and it also depends on the nation. In South Africa, for example, 5G coverage reached 41% of the population by the end of 2023. That's the high point unfortunately.
Most African nations leg in the technology, including the continent's biggest economy of Nigeria.
- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
