Brussels (Brussels Morning) – Despite Brussels’ 5G promotion, Europe lags behind US and Asia. Fragmented regulations and lack of innovation hinder EU’s digital economy transition.
Bureaucrats in Brussels have long attempted to sell Europe as the genuine home of 5G. “5G is becoming a concerted international effort in which Europe is recreating a leading role,” the bloc’s then-digital commissioner Günther Oettinger told telecoms executives at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in 2015.
Yet nearly a decade later, that claim looks baseless. While the US and Asia have made meaningful strides with their latest mobile networks, Europe is a global laggard. “Europe is drastically lowering behind on 5G,” states Joakim Reiter, Vodafone’s chief external and corporate affairs officer. “We’re getting pounded by some middle-income countries that we normally would not think to be competitors in this space of technology and innovation.”
Bangkok has a faster 5G infrastructure than the best-performing European capital Helsinki, while Guatemala has a more useful network than Sweden. Executives claim that fixing this problem is not simply a subject of improving mobile connectivity for customers but ensuring that the EU has the infrastructure it requires to underpin an increasingly digital economy.
“It’s important because it will affect whether we have manufacturing jobs in the destiny in Europe or not,” states Reiter. “That’s why people require to care now.”EU network operators have lacked the firepower to support the billions required to deploy cutting-edge infrastructure.
Numerous in the industry place the responsibility at the door of the European Commission, which stands charged with pursuing an overzealous practice of regulation at the expense of innovation. Now, with EU elections looming, executives are cautioning that the bloc’s sluggish transition to a digital economy could have long-lasting repercussions.
Just 4 per cent of the first 500 million users of 5G globally arrived from the EU, approximately 71 per cent from China, according to data from the GSMA. This lacklustre performance can in detail be condemned on muted enthusiasm for 5G, which lacks the transformative consumer influence offered by earlier mobile network upgrades.
“We know that one of the major problems for a slow rollout is the absence of a consumer use case for 5G at this point,” states Matthew Howett, founder and chief executive of Assembly Research. Mobile bosses have rather trumpeted the benefits of 5G in underpinning future technologies varying from smart manufacturing to interconnected homes and self-driving cars.
Rival superpowers appear to have cottoned on to this opportunity. However, there is frustration across the enterprise that EU policymakers have not been as supporting as many other nations. “The Americans are much more attentive on driving innovation,” states one executive. “In Europe, we tend to go for creation by permission, and I think that’s an intellectual difference.”
Europe’s telecoms business is a patchwork of 27 markets, with little character between different network infrastructure, spectrum surveillance and regulations. Moreover, a dogmatic passion for competition has led to a positively fragmented market. Last year Europe had 45 large mobile grid operators with more than 500,000 customers, approximated to eight in the US, four in both China and Japan, and three in South Korea, according to industry group ETNO.
