In separate deals coming just after this year’s Mobile World Congress, United States and European Union officials have reached agreements to hasten the allocation of radio spectrum for next-generation 5G wireless networks, Reuters reports. Both governments were spurred to action by the threat of becoming internationally non-competitive, as representatives moved faster than might have been imagined only a week earlier.

In the United States, senators and representatives from both the Republican and Democratic sides said that they have agreed on a bill that lets the FCC receive upfront payments from 5G spectrum bidders, resolving an issue FCC Chairman Ajit Pai identified earlier this week, and enabling auctions of 5G radio spectrum to go forward. The bill also includes provisions to identify additional 5G spectrum and reduce bureaucracy in the infrastructure building process. A vote in the House is expected on Tuesday, March 6.

If passed, the bill will enable the FCC to proceed with planned auctions of 28GHz and 24GHz millimeter wave spectrum, which were tentatively scheduled for November pending Congressional action. Pai suggested that the auctions would be delayed if Congress failed to act by May 13, but the rapid Congressional response suggests that the U.S. government is impressively ready to expedite 5G when asked. The FCC’s next move will likely be to open up 3.7-4.2MHz midband spectrum, another key 5G enabler.

In Europe, meanwhile, lawmakers representing European Union countries agreed late last night to free up 5G radio frequencies for a 20-year time period. While Reuters reports that a telecommunications industry lobbying group was seeking at least a 25-year timeframe, the deal enables 5G spectrum to become available throughout the EU by 2020.

Similar to the U.S., European countries are focusing on 3.6GHz midband and 26GHz millimeter wave spectrum bands for 5G. The 3.6GHz spectrum will likely prove better suited to handheld devices, as its radio signals are not as position-sensitive, while the 26GHz spectrum can more easily be used in so-called “fixed 5G” hardware designed to be installed and used in one place.

Both of the deals are expected to hasten the arrival of autonomous cars, smart cities, fully wireless virtual reality, and ultra high-speed mobile internet services. In the United States, AT&T and Verizon have both committed to 5G rollouts later this year, while European carriers have made only tentative steps towards rolling out 5G, citing regulatory and financial uncertainties — a situation likely to improve with the latest agreements. </s> BRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU countries and lawmakers have struck a deal to free up radio frequencies for next-generation 5G services that will be valid for 20 years, as the bloc tries to catch up with the United States and China in rolling out internet-connected products.

Telecoms lobbying group ETNO, whose members include Orange, Telefonica and Telecom Italia, criticized the deal, however, saying it lacked ambition and that a timeframe of at least 25 years was needed.

The provisional agreement late on Thursday came after months of squabbling between EU governments seeking to guard a lucrative source of revenue and cash-strapped telecoms providers looking for new ways to boost profits.

Next-generation 5G services promise to deliver not just faster phones and video, but also connected cars and internet-connected industrial sensors over the next decade.

Under the agreement, 5G will be available throughout the bloc by 2020, with spectrum guaranteed for a minimum of 20 years.

The deal will facilitate the roll-out of connected vehicles, health-related services, smart cities and incentivize telecoms operators to speed up 5G networks, Pilar del Castillo, the European Parliament’s lead negotiator on the issue, said.

The issue is part of the European Commission’s reforms of telecoms rules known as the European Electronic Communications Code. The EU executive wants to get formal agreement on this topic during Bulgaria’s presidency of the bloc which ends in June.

Commission digital chief Andrius Ansip said the deal should spur all involved parties to agree on other reforms.

ETNO chairman Phillip Malloch said the reforms should have been bolder.

“5G will not be accelerated by a piecemeal reform, as Europe requires strong peer review and predictable licenses of at least 25 years. It appears negotiations still lack the ambitious direction everyone was looking for,” he said.

China is the world’s biggest 5G market by far. </s> BARCELONA: Blazing fast 5G wireless networks promise to unlock the potential of internet connected devices, or the Internet of Things—making driverless cars and talking fridges a reality.

With most European operators targeting 2020 for its rollout, 5G is the term on everyone’s lips at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Like the 4G networks currently widely available, 5G is based on radio frequencies, the same used for television broadcasts, walkie-talkies, wi-fi signals or a garage door remote control.

It will use a higher radio frequency that are not in use and can move data at a much faster speed.

But since higher radio frequencies don’t travel as far as lower frequencies, it will rely on denser arrays of small antennas and artificial intelligence to offer data speeds up to 50 or 100 times faster than current 4G networks.

What can it do?

5G will allow people to send texts, make calls, and browse the web as always—but will dramatically increase the speed at which data is transferred across the network.

This will make it easier to download and upload Ultra HD and 3D video and allow smartphones to run more complex mobile internet apps.

5G will also make room for the thousands of internet-connected devices entering our everyday world.

The combination of speed and quicker response times could unlock the full capabilities of other hot trends in technology, offering a boost to self-driving cars, drones, virtual reality and the wider Internet of Things.

Beyond speed, the biggest benefit of 5G is its low latency, or the short lag time between a device pinging the network and getting a response.

A 5G network virtually eliminates it, meaning a surgeon may not need to be in the same room as a patient in the future for example.

Why is 5G seen as essential?

The tech industry is counting on 5G to trigger a wave of growth in equipment sales and mobile services.

For years telecom operators and device makers have debated common standards, which will make it possible to have a similar network everywhere and develop products that could be targeted to it.

What are the obstacles to its adoption?

The industry is still fighting over the nitty-gritty details of the technology itself and a lack of common standards could slow its adoption.

5G compatible phones are still not on the market and in many countries 4G deployment is not yet complete. In a number of African countries it is only just starting.

Deutsche Telekom CEO Timotheus Hoettges has estimated the cost of providing 5G networks in Europe alone at EUR300 billion to EUR500 billion ($370 billion to $615 billion).

5G also faces competition from other technologies that may be better suited for the connected devices, such as French firm Sigfox’s non-cellular IoT network or LoRa, a rival non-standardized low power wide area (LPWA) offering backed by France-based Orange amongst others. </s> The 5G deal was one of several cooperation agreements signed after talks on Wednesday between President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Moscow. The Kremlin website lists the deal as a “memorandum of understanding.”

Russia’s top cellphone operator MTS has signed an agreement with Huawei to develop 5G technology as the Chinese telecom giant faces escalating pressure from the United States, news agencies reported.

Pilot launches of the advanced cellular network technology will be held in 2019 and next year, according to Agence France Presse.

The United States, which has blacklisted Huawei, has discouraged its European allies from using the Chinese company's technology, citing concerns about a "backdoor" that could enable spying by the Chinese state.

Europe — where Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, the Netherlands, Lithuania and Portugal are preparing to auction 5G licenses this year — has emerged as a battleground over Huawei's next-generation technology.

The security issue is crucial because of 5G's leading role in internet-connected products ranging from self-driving cars and smart cities to augmented reality and artificial intelligence. If underlying technology is vulnerable, it could allow hackers to exploit such products to spy or disrupt them. </s> BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European lawmakers clinched a deal early on Wednesday to cap the wholesale charges mobile service operators pay each other to enable their customers to use their mobile phones in other European countries, paving the way for the abolition of roaming fees in June.

A man makes a phone call using his mobile phone at the Trocadero Square near the Eiffel Tower in Paris, May 16, 2014. REUTERS/Christian Hartmann/File Photo

The caps on wholesale roaming charges were the last piece of the puzzle needed for the abolition of retail roaming charges on June 15, 2017, to ensure companies can afford to continue offering roaming within the EU once they can no longer charge retail customers for the service.

Under Wednesday’s agreement between lawmakers and the Council of EU member states, wholesale charges for data - which were the most controversial given the exponential use of mobile Internet - will be capped at 7.7 euros per gigabyte from June 2017, going down to 2.5 euros per gigabyte in 2022.

Caps for making calls will decrease from 5 euro cents per minute to 3.2 euro cents per minute, while those for sending text messages will halve to 1 euro cent from 2 euro cents as of June, said the Council.

“Goodbye roaming,” tweeted Miapetra Kumpula-Natri, the EU lawmaker who negotiated for the setting of wholesale rates on behalf of the European parliament.

The European Commission - the EU executive - will review the wholesale caps every two years and propose new ones if necessary.

Wednesday’s deal still needs to be confirmed by the full European Parliament and all member states.

The decade-long battle against roaming charges took on an added significance after Britain voted to quit the bloc last year in a surge of anti-EU sentiment, making Brussels keen to demonstrate the benefits of membership to ordinary citizens.

“Today we deliver on our promise,” said Andrus Ansip, European Commission vice president.

But after the agreement to abolish retail roaming charges in June this year, policymakers grappled with the challenge of who would foot the bill as telecom operators still need to pay each other to keep their customers connected abroad.

The difficulty was compounded by wide differences in domestic prices and consumption patterns across the bloc, making a wholesale cap that suited all national markets extremely hard to settle.

Countries in northern and eastern Europe where consumers gobble up mobile data at low prices favored lower wholesale caps to avoid companies raising prices in their home markets, effectively making poorer customers subsidize frequent travelers.

However countries in southern Europe where tourism is vital to their economies worried that if wholesale prices were too low their operators could be forced to raise domestic prices to recover the costs.

While politicians were quick to proclaim the end of roaming charges, some mobile service operators warned that the wholesale caps were still too high, which would force smaller operators to limit their ‘roam like at home’ offers.

“European citizens expect the end of the roaming surcharges to happen without losing competitive tariffs and innovative offers,” said Innocenzo Genna, vice-president of MVNO Europe, which represents mobile virtual network operators who do not own a network, such as Fastweb [SCMNSF.UL], Sky and Liberty Global .

“With the present deal on wholesale caps, they will be heavily disappointed,” he added. </s> Smartphone users in 33 countries now experience faster speeds using a cellular network in comparison to Wi-Fi, but mobile technology in three developed markets including the US continue to underperform, a new OpenSignal report found.

In a study looking into Wi-Fi and the mobile network experience, wireless mapping company OpenSignal said mobile download speeds proved superior to Wi-Fi in a range of countries, including richer nations like Australia and France, as well as less developed markets such as Qatar, Turkey, Mexico and South Africa.

However, in three highly developed geographies – the US, Hong Kong and Singapore -“the mobile experience bucks the global trend” and “significantly underperforms” compared with smartphone users’ Wi-Fi download experience.

On a mobile network, users in the three countries experience a slower download experience of -38.6Mb/s, 34Mb/s and 25Mb/s respectively, compared to Wi-Fi.

Australia leads

 Of all the countries analysed, smartphone users in Australia benefitted the most from using mobile over Wi-Fi, where average download speeds came in at 13Mb/s faster overall. Users in France had a 2.5Mb/s advantage, while Qatar and Turkey had an uplift of 11.8Mb/s and 7.3Mb/s respectively.

OpenSignal said newer mobile technologies, such as 4G, increased mobile network superiority.

“In 50 countries, 63 per cent of those studied, 4G networks offer a faster smartphone download experience than Wi-Fi, up from 41 per cent of countries when compared with overall mobile broadband experience instead of 4G,” said the company.

On 3G, only seven countries experienced a faster experience, and even then, the experience was modest with an increase of 3Mb/s in Lebanon.

OpenSignal added mobile technology is expected to dominate further through 5G, due to the pace of mobile innovation and the dependency of Wi-Fi experiences on fixed-network broadband deployments, “which are slow and expensive to upgrade with fibre to the premise (FTTP)”.

The report added that operators and smartphone makers must “re-evaluate their Wi-Fi strategies”, in light of the results, especially around mobile offload, automatic network selection and indoor coverage to make sure they don’t push consumer smartphones onto “Wi-Fi that offers a worse experience than the mobile network”. </s> 5G wireless connectivity is coming this year, and companies are running a full-court press to make sure you know about it.

BARCELONA — 5G wireless is coming faster than you might think. But as the advent of this next generation of over-the-air broadband draws near, the hype surrounding it is starting to ebb.

Last year, a typical quote about 5G might have sounded like the declaration that Meredith Attwell Baker, president of the wireless trade group CTIA, made at a conference in September: “5G will make every industry and every part of our lives better.”

And now? The rhetoric is a bit more subdued. “5G is going to be an incremental upgrade,” T-Mobile (TMUS) chief technical officer Neville Ray said at a press conference Tuesday night at Mobile World Congress 2018.

Yes, 5G will eventually bring much faster downloads and much lower latency — but it’s not going to replace 4G the way 4G wiped 3G off the map. And it won’t come to smartphones until after it reaches other, larger devices.

Signs of 5G’s progress from marketing visions and bulky testing gear to deployment schedules and early versions of consumer hardware were all over the floor here at MWC.

Qualcomm (QCOM), for instance, showed off prototypes of the X50 5G chipset it will make for 5G smartphones that will ship next year. A model running a network-bandwidth test showed download speeds hovering at around 4 gigabits per second, about 100 times faster than 4G LTE.

And all four national U.S. carriers are advertising 5G availability timetables.

Verizon (VZ) looks to be first. In November, the carrier announced it will launch “fixed wireless” residential 5G in Sacramento, Calif., in the second half of this year, with two to four other cities following. In an interview Tuesday, chief network engineering officer Nicola Palmer reiterated that schedule and said a mobile 5G service “will quickly follow.”

AT&T (T) released its own 5G timeline last week, touting plans to deliver “mobile 5G” to a dozen cities (with only Georgia, Dallas and Waco, Tex., named) by the end of 2018. What that press release didn’t spell out: This access will initially be confined to mobile hotspots, because no 5G smartphones will ship until 2019.

Sprint (S) said Tuesday that it will launch mobile 5G service “in the first half of 2019,” while customers in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles and Washington will get “5G-like” service this year as it upgrades its network to prepare for 5G.

Later Tuesday, T-Mobile announced that it will build 5G networks in 30 cities, with smartphone service due next year in Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, and Las Vegas.

“5G is happening fast — even faster than we or anyone else expected,” Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri summed up at a press conference Sunday.

Beyond the residential, hotspot and smartphone 5G services we’ll see, it’s also important to remember that 5G will come over three main sets of frequencies with their own trade-offs.

The fastest 5G, like what that Qualcomm chipset showed off, will come via millimeter-wave frequencies at 24 GHz and above — far higher than today’s LTE bands. The tradeoff there: They won’t cover as much distance. It’s similar to how a 5-GHz Wi-Fi signal won’t reach as far as across your house as a 2.4-GHz network. </s> 5G was the buzzword at the Mobile World Congress, the biggest annual conference and exhibition for the mobile industry, held this week in Barcelona, Spain.

Companies plastered the venue halls with prominent slogans, from “5G is now”, “Leading 5G innovation” and “Network towards 5G” to “5G is happening faster than we expected”.

Those catchphrases about the next generation of ultra-fast wireless technology may mean little to most people outside the mobile industry.

Yet 5G is what will enable a lot of the science fiction-like technologies being talked about today, such as autonomous cars and smart cities.

On a 5G network, a connected car travelling at 100 kilometres per hour (62 miles per hour) will have moved just 2.8 centimetres, or little more than inch, from the time it detects an obstacle to when it activates the brakes, according to estimates by Huawei Technologies.

That could be the difference between life and death.

Today’s 4G networks are unsuitable for the quick response times needed in autonomous driving.

Smartphone users will be able to send ultra-high 4k resolution video within a few seconds. Bandwidth-hungry video games, augmented and virtual reality technologies will be seamless, offering a more immersive experience.

A 5G network will be able to support the increasing number of connected devices around the world, from fitness-tracking watches to internet-linked television and computer systems that run a city’s traffic lights.

How soon will 5G be rolled out?

The first commercial 5G networks should start coming online from 2020, according to the International Telecommunications Union.

Many mobile network operators are conducting 5G trials in cities from Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong and Yinchuan in northwestern China to San Francisco in the United States and Frankfurt in Germany.

Will the roads be filled with self-driving cars once 5G is rolled out?

Autonomous cars and other mobility services require more support infrastructure than your smartphone.

Self-driving cars require sensors, artificial intelligence and roadside base stations for connectivity to allow vehicles to “talk” to each other and avoid collisions or hit pedestrians.

These equipment may need to be deployed at the street level on lamp posts or traffic lights.

One of the first 5G smartphones is expected to be launched in the second half of this year by Huawei, China’s biggest smartphone brand.

The release of a range of 5G smartphones that can also work on existing 4G networks is widely expected later next year, after the standards are set and spectrum is allocated.

About 1 billion people globally are likely to use 5G mobile services within five years, leading to US$12.3 trillion in worldwide economic output by the mid-2030s, according to estimates from Ericsson and IHS Markit. </s> Nordic telecom operator Teliasonera has bought 4G licenses in Finland for 41.2 million euros ($567 million) to boost coverage in the country, the company said on Wednesday.

"The new frequencies will enable a significant increase in 4G coverage and constitute an important step in creating Finland's most extensive mobile broadband network," Teliasonera said in a statement.

The license auction was held by Finland's Ministry of Transport and Communications. ($1 = 0.7262 euros)
European Union lawmakers strike a deal on opening up the 3.6 and 26 GHz bandwidths by 2020 to make room for the new 5G network.