The European Commission wants at least one major city in each member state to have 5G services by 2020, and wants all homes across the European Union to have access to broadband at 100Mbps by 2025.
The Commission’s new targets – revealed in a leaked document and expected to be published in September – call for public funds to be made available to improve internet access and wants fibre-to-the-home to be used as the main delivery mechanism, to replace copper.
Its recommendations for 5G call for a fast roll-out of services within only a few years of the first commercial services, expected in 2020. It specifies that all urban centres of the European Union (EU) – currently 28 nations, though likely to drop to 27 if the UK leaves the union – and all transport paths should have uninterrupted 5G coverage by 2025.
The report does not specify just speed, but makes recommendations about such factors as latency, jitter and reliability. The speed, though, is a significant increase on the current 30Mbps target, set for 2020.
“The Commission estimates that at least 75-80% of the population has to be covered with networks capable of providing speeds at 100Mbps in order for at least 50% of European households to actually subscribe to such speed,” says the report, which was leaked by European online news service EurActiv.com.
“As of June 2015, 49% of EU homes are already covered by networks capable of providing such download speeds. It is estimated however, that without additional regulatory and financial incentives for investment this necessary condition for reaching the take-up target may be missed.”
The report also specifies that”100% of socio-economic drivers” should have access to symmetrical services at 1Gbps or higher by 2025. The term covers businesses, schools, hospitals, local government and other institutions.
