The report is from the Digital Connectivity Forum which advises the government
According to a report published by the Digital Connectivity Forum, “the government’s advisory body on connectivity”, the UK is at risk of failing to reap the full benefits of 5G. It is worth noting that the Forum’s industry members include the BBC, BT, CityFibre, Cornerstone, Ericsson, Gigaclear, Giganet, Huawei, Hyperoptic, Openreach, Sky, TalkTalk, TechUK, Three, Virgin Media O2, Vodafone, and the Wireless Infrastructure Group.
The Digital Connectivity Forum collaborated on the report with Frontier Economics, and it examines network operators’ capacity to invest in 5G services.
It finds that the industry has the capacity to invest about £9 billion in new network infrastructure by 2030, but that this falls short of the cost of delivering full 5G which it estimates would cost an additional £23 billion to £25 billion.
The report reckons that only this greater level of investment can deliver transformative services dependent on 5G, such as autonomous vehicles, automated logistics and telemedicine. It recommends direct government support for operators, and regulatory and structural reform to help close the predicted investment gap.
Alex Mather, Head of the Digital Connectivity Forum urged,“To make a reality of the Government’s levelling up agenda, to boost productivity, growth and competitiveness requires action. We therefore encourage the Government and industry to work together to ensure that intensive and timely investment is delivered.”
The Forum’s pleas are likely to fall on deaf ears, for example, the UK’s new Prime Minister, Liz Truss, has already said she will scrap smart motorways. In the current economic crisis investment in things which perhaps are seen as nice to have rather than fundamental are unlikely to get much of a hearing.
The business case?
Frontier Economics estimates the costs of 5G roll-out in three scenarios:
• Basic 5G capacity that focuses on upgrading existing networks to deliver additional capacity to satisfy Ofcom’s base case growth in traffic of 40% per year for which the estimated cost is £5 billion to £7 billion.
• Basic 5G coverage that meets future traffic demand and covers 95% of the population without necessarily providing significantly increased capabilities in more rural areas, at an estimated cost of an additional £7 billion.
• Advanced or full 5G deployment to provide better 5G quality and coverage over a greater area and that enables ultra-low latency 5G use cases (like driverless cars or other autonomous technologies) in urban locations which the report estimates would bring economic benefit of £20 million.
The report can be found here.