France Finally Jumps On 5G Bandwagon

France is finally gearing up to lay the foundation for 5G. The country’s communications regulatory agency kicked off the year with a call for network operators to apply for new spectrum licenses in the 3.4 GHz and 3.8 GHz bands.

The country’s four mobile operators — Orange, SFR, Bouygues Telecom, and Free — are each being offered 50 megahertz of spectrum at a fixed price of almost $390.8 million. The carriers will also have the opportunity to apply for an additional 11 lots of 10-megahertz blocks of spectrum in an auction with a starting bid of $78 million.

ARCEP, or the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Communications and Posts, says it will begin issuing the licenses during the first half of the year. It expects to generate at least $2.4 billion from the fixed and auction-based spectrum licenses.

The French operators must file applications for the spectrum by Feb. 25, and each will be required to deploy 5G in at least two major cities before the end of the year, following rules imposed by the European Union. The French regulator has also imposed specific guidelines about minimum speeds, coverage, the number of cell sites equipped with 5G, and a timeline for the rollout of network slicing.

France 5G vs Europe

The total cost for 5G spectrum in France is slated to be considerably less than the $7.4 billion that German operators paid for new spectrum in the 2 GHz and 3.6 GHz bands in June 2019. At the time, Dirk Wössner, head of market leader Deutsche Telekom Germany, said “the auction leaves a bitter aftertaste,” and Vodafone Germany CEO Hannes Ametstreiter described the final price tag as “catastrophic.” That new spectrum in Germany also won’t be formally allocated until 2021 and 2026, respectively.

France is Europe’s fifth-most populated country and is basically tied with the United Kingdom for the second-largest economy in the region. It’s also the last of the major European nations to launch 5G-specific spectrum auctions. Operators last year began deploying 5G in large cities across Germany, Spain, Italy, and the United Kingdom.―SDX Central