Government Urged to Focus on 5G Consistency

The government must focus on ensuring reliable and consistent coverage.

17:54 26 October 2017

Instead of setting unrealistic connectivity requirements for 5G mobile broadband, the government must focus on ensuring reliable and consistent coverage, researchers say.

 

A new report from the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School has warned that the government’s connectivity requirements for 5G mobile may be unrealistic especially in rural areas. They said that in order to fully exploit the potentials of 5G, the government should instead focus on providing reliable and consistent universal coverage.

 

It is expected that once 5G is rolled out in 2020, it will deliver at least 1Gbps and would allow users to download a full HD movie in just seconds. This is the emerging network standard not just for government ministers but also for technology companies and the national media. 

 

However, researchers said that consumers may not require such speeds any time soon in order to conduct everyday tasks on the internet. 

 

The study’s co-author, Edward Oughton, a research associate in technology modelling at Cambridge Judge Business School’s Centre for Risk Studies, said: “We don’t need higher and higher headline speeds, but what we do need is reliable connectivity – to ensure we can reap the productivity benefits of new digital applications, platforms and services,”

 

“We haven’t been able to achieve this with 4G LTE in the UK as patchy reception often leads to disruption,” he said.

 

“Operators can struggle to deploy new base stations and the industry has been experiencing declining revenues, meaning there isn’t much capability for large scale infrastructure investment.”