Officials in Brussels have been trying to promote Europe as the home of 5G for years.
“5G is becoming a concerted global effort, with Europe playing a leading role,” Günther Oettinger, the bloc’s digital commissioner at the time, said at a conference in Barcelona in 2015. Speaking to carrier executives at Mobile World Congress.
But nearly a decade later, that claim appears to be unfounded. While the United States and Asia have made great strides in new mobile networks, Europe lags behind globally.
“Europe is far behind in 5G,” said Joachim Reiter, Vodafone’s chief external and corporate officer. “We’re losing out in this area of technology and innovation to some middle-income countries that we wouldn’t normally consider competitors.”
Bangkok has a faster 5G network than the best-performing European capital, Helsinki, and Guatemala has a better network than Sweden.
Executives say solving this problem is not just about improving mobile connectivity for consumers, but also ensuring Europe has the infrastructure it needs to support an increasingly digital economy. ing.
“This is important because it will affect whether there will be manufacturing jobs in Europe in the future,” says Reiter. “That’s why people need to be careful now.”
European network operators lack the firepower to invest the billions of dollars needed to deploy cutting-edge infrastructure.
Many industry players place the blame on the European Commission. The commission has been accused of pursuing an overreaching approach to regulation at the expense of innovation.
Now, with EU elections looming, executives are warning that delays in the EU’s transition to a digital economy could have long-term consequences.
According to GSMA data, of the first 500 million global 5G users, only 4% were from the EU and 71% were from China.
Part of this lackluster performance can be attributed to waning enthusiasm for 5G, which lacks the innovative consumer impact brought about by previous mobile network upgrades. Masu.
“We know that one of the key issues with slow deployment is that there are currently no consumer use cases for 5G,” said Matthew, Founder and CEO of Assembly Research. Howett said.
Mobile industry leaders are instead touting the benefits of 5G, which will underpin future technologies from smart manufacturing to connected homes to self-driving cars.
Rival superpowers appear to be seizing the opportunity. But there is widespread frustration across the industry that European policymakers have not been as cooperative as in many other countries.
“Americans are more focused on driving innovation,” says one executive. “In Europe, we tend to pursue innovation with permission, and I think that’s an intellectual difference.”
The European telecommunications market is a patchwork of 27 markets, with little consistency between different network infrastructures, spectrum management, and regulations.
Furthermore, the market is highly fragmented due to the arbitrary desire for competition. According to industry group ETNO, there were 45 major mobile network operators with more than 500,000 customers in Europe last year, compared to eight in the United States, four in China and Japan, and three in South Korea. .
