State of 5G in EU: 66% population coverage achieved in EU27
The latest quarterly report on progress in the development of next-generation mobile infrastructure and networks was made available by the European 5G Observatory. This is the 16th report, and it adds two new countries to the European accounts, Belgium and Slovakia, which have just now completed their 5G spectrum auctions. 5g coverage eu
The report also reflects new developments at the European Union level, such as the political agreements reached in the Digital Decade programme.
The analysis now also reflects the challenges of measuring the development of 5G and its progress across countries and operators. The report considers publicly available data on 5G coverage, connection speeds, and the extent of developments in private networks in the countries that disclose the respective data.
The report also presents a tool for scoring network coverage and speeds, highlighting countries such as Italy, the Netherlands, and Denmark with almost 100% coverage. Portugal has already reached 75% of total 5G coverage (7,723,689 inhabitants), well ahead of Spain (58.9%) and even France (74.4%) . It should be noted that the European Union of 27 already has 66% of the population covered with 5G and includes indicators such as the use of dynamic spectrum sharing and covered locations with at least one operator.
A total of 147,308 5G base stations by end of 2021 in EU27 5g coverage eu
Only the total number of 5G base stations is known for some EU countries. This means the true total number of base stations in the EU in 700 MHz, 3.6 GHz or DSS bands may be higher, the 5G Observatory warns. Excludes Italy, Estonia and Sweden as there was no base station data available. Additionally, some countries use bands that are not included in this chart and do not operate using a DSS configuration.
Whereas 5G promises to offer services to various industries, so-called “verticals” include businesses such as agriculture, factories, and logistics. These are dependent on private 5G networks, that is, those that are not accessible by the general public. As such, they cannot be measured by tools like Ookla and Open Signal.
The 5G Observatory says it is dependent on public announcements, either from equipment vendors or mobile network operators. It is mentioned that in some countries such as Germany, regulators have made available spectrum licenses dedicated to 5G Vertical. Countries such as Italy and Portugal have not currently provisioned spectrum dedicated to 5G verticals, which makes it difficult to draw up a report in this field. 5g coverage eu
