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techUK to respond to National Infrastructure Commission 5G Call for Evidence
The National Infrastructure Commission is seeking views on the infrastructure requirements for the development and deployment of 5G in the UK.
Yesterday the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) launched a 5G Call for Evidence, seeking views on the infrastructure requirements for the development and deployment of 5G in the UK.
This consultation follows the 2016 Budget announcements in which the Chancellor asked the commission to “consider what the UK needs to do to become a world leader in 5G deployment, and to ensure that the UK can take early advantage of the potential applications of 5G services.”
The NIC’s assessment and recommendations, which will be reported back to government by the end of 2016, will underpin the government’s 5G strategy, which will be announced in spring 2017. This consultation closes at 11 July 2016 11:45pm.
The questions the NIC is particularly keen to focus on are:
What uses have been envisaged for 5G?
- of those use cases identified, which appear most credible from a UK perspective, and over what timeframe?
- what is the potential scale of benefits?
What regulatory, planning and other key challenges need to be overcome to support the rapid and cost effective deployment of 5G across the UK?
- are there planning or wider legal issues which have the potential to hold back the deployment of 5G networks?
- are there issues around working across industry sectors which may hold back the deployment of 5G networks?
What are the infrastructure requirements for 5G deployment likely to be?
- what do the services and uses for 5G suggest about the infrastructure requirement?
- what level of UK coverage will be optimum and what does this mean for the challenge of delivering higher speeds and lower latency? Are there
- particular issues faced by urban, suburban and rural areas?
- are there any ‘no regrets’ and ‘low regrets’ infrastructure investments that can be made to support 5G deployment?
- in what ways could collaboration between infrastructure sectors speed up and improve deployment, and how might it be incentivised?
- are there any relevant international examples in the deployment of telecoms infrastructure that the UK can learn from?
Who should bear the deployment costs of 5G?
- what is 5G deployment likely to cost the UK?
- are there international examples to draw on?
Is the existing UK telecommunications model able to facilitate the efficient roll out of 5G infrastructure and technologies?
- is spectrum policy and its management well placed to support future 5G technologies?
The Communications Policy Council will be responding to this call for evidence. Please get in touch with Skye MacLeod if you would like further information on how to get involved.
The 5G Project Lead within the National Infrastructure Commission will be speaking at tomorrow’s UK Spectrum Policy Forum Cluster 1 meeting on How 5G will Emerge in the UK (17 May 14:00-17:00).
