Four telecoms companies addressed the Channel Islands Competition and Regulatory Authorities first 5G summit and outlined their thoughts on the way forward, as well as giving some insight into their role.
Sure chief marketing officer Alastair Beak spoke about the ‘transformational potential’ of 5G.
While 3G offered speeds of up to 384kilobits per second, with 4G it was 100megabits per second and the potential for 5G is 10gigabits per second, with the anticipated speed at first being between 1-2gbps.
Sure’s vision was ‘fibre in the air, everywhere’.
But he said that the implementation needed to be through a private-public partnership – it was not a question of if Sure would launch the technology, it was a question of how quickly.
Sure and Airtel Vodafone have both announced plans to trial 5G locally next year.
Airtel Vodafone’s head of sales and marketing Peter Zunino said the company was the only mobile-only network provider in the islands, and its partners in India had introduced the first 5G-capable network.
Steve Samson of company partners Nokia said that the issue once 5G came in would no longer be that of ‘fixed versus mobile’ networks.
An important aspect was standardisation, which industry relied upon. Until these standards could be agreed, handsets could not be produced, and it took up to 15 months for new handsets to be developed after the agreement of a standard.
The next standard for 5G would be released in about 2020 so it was likely that the next generation of handsets would not come out until 2021 or 2022.
Airtel Vodafone CEO Sid Ahlawat said later that he was pleased that the islands’ governments and planning departments were promoting the benefits of network sharing: ‘We will work with all stakeholders to further these discussions.’
JT director of corporate affairs Daragh McDermott said that network sharing would evolve but there would be no quick fix.
‘The cost of rolling out infrastructure will be significant, but we can make it work.’ he said.
JT recently signed a 5G network supply agreement and he said the company was looking forward to rolling out the technology in the islands.
Founder and CEO of Clear Mobitel, Harpal Mann, said that the company was hoping to deliver 5G services in Guernsey in the future.
The company was talking to four different vendors with a view to bringing the technology to Guernsey, he said.
He looked at ‘megatrends’ which were expected to be shaping the world by 2025, such as 3D printing, robotics, neurotechnologies and ideas like Blockchain.
There were three key areas of innovation – better efficiency, a better user experience and a better revenue experience, he said.
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