Elsevier

Telecommunications Policy

Volume 42, Issue 8, September 2018, Pages 636-652
Telecommunications Policy

The cost, coverage and rollout implications of 5G infrastructure in Britain

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2017.07.009Get rights and content
Under a Creative Commons license
open access

Highlights

  • 5G rollout of ultrafast mobile broadband reaches 90% of the population by 2027.

  • Varying capital intensity principally affects the pace of rollout to rural areas.

  • Sharing small cell infrastructure reaches 90% of the population by 2024.

  • Newly integrated spectrum is sufficient to provide 10 Mbps in rural areas.

Abstract

Despite 5G still being embryonic in its development, there is already a quest for evidence to support decision-making in government and industry. Although there is still considerable technological, economic and behavioural uncertainty, exploration of how the potential rollout may take place both spatially and temporally is required for effective policy formulation. Consequently, the cost, coverage and rollout implications of 5G networks across Britain are explored by extrapolating 4G LTE and LTE-Advanced characteristics for the period 2020–2030. We focus on ubiquitous ultrafast broadband of 50 Mbps and test the impact of annual capital intensity, infrastructure sharing and reducing the end-user speed in rural areas to either 10 or 30 Mbps. For the business-as-usual scenario we find that 90% of the population is covered with 5G by 2027, but coverage is unlikely to reach the final 10% due to exponentially increasing costs. Moreover, varying annual capital intensity or deploying a shared small cell network can greatly influence the time taken to reach the 90% threshold, with these changes mostly benefiting rural areas. Importantly, simply by integrating new and existing spectrum, a network capable of achieving 10 Mbps per rural user is possible, which is comparable to the UK's current fixed broadband Universal Service Obligation. We contribute to the literature by quantifying the effectiveness of the spatial and temporal rollout of 5G under different policy options.

Keywords

5G
Spatial rollout
Cost modelling
Infrastructure sharing

Cited by (0)

Edward Oughton has worked as part of the EPSRC-funded Infrastructure Transitions Research Consortium since 2012, where his research first developed models for understanding the factors driving investment in fixed and mobile broadband markets. Ed currently leads the digital communications modelling work with David Cleevely on the EPSRC-funded project entitled Multi-scale InfraSTRucture systems AnaLytics (Mistral). His recent research was contributed as evidence for the UK's National Needs Assessment. The 5G cost assessment model developed as part of ITRC Mistral was used by HM Treasury's National Infrastructure Commission as evidence for the national 5G strategy.

Zoraida Frias is an assistant professor at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, where she has been a fellow of the Group of Information Technologies and Communications (GTIC) since 2010. She has contributed to several research projects related to telecommunications regulation and public policies, among others, for the Spanish State Secretary of Telecommunications through the Red.es Professorship. She holds a PhD in Telecommunication Engineering from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. In 2015 she was a visiting researcher at the Center for Technology, Innovation and Competition (CTIC) of the University of Pennsylvania. Her interests revolve around competition policy, especially with regard to next-generation networks deployment and spectrum management.