German government ministers have met with the head of the Federal Networks Agency to discuss progress on setting the terms of the 5G spectrum auction. The infrastructure minister Andreas Scheuer suggested that coverage requirements may be stricter than the original proposal from the Bundesnetzagentur, news agency DPA reports.
Scheuer said the government was "committed to the nationwide expansion of mobile communications". This means not just cities should benefit from digitisation but also rural areas, to ensure the same quality of life, he said.
Following a meeting on 05 November, government representatives and the Federal Network Agency agreed new supply requirements for the upcoming auction, the ministry said. The telecoms regulator is finalising the plans before presenting its plan at the end of this month.
This is expected to mean better coverage along train lines, and not just high-speed lines, as well as required coverage along more roads than just the national motorways, albeit at a lower speed of 50 Mbps. The agency had previously said it was not economically viable to require such coverage with the current frequencies in the 2GHz and 3.6GHz bands, and other, more suitable spectrum would be made available later.
Information obtained by Handelsblatt on the new proposal suggests operators would be required to cover three times as many railways by the end of 2022 with 100 Mbps. The remaining 15,000 km of railways, on which fewer than 2,000 passengers travel each day, would be covered gradually, as well as the core network of waterways and ports. In addition, the paper said a latency requirement of 10ms would be added for motorways, to ensure the networks necessary for autonomous vehicles.
Separately, the Association of Municipal Enterprises (VKU), fibre industry group Buglas and the Internet Economy Foundation (IEF) published a policy paper calling for the government to require national roaming on mobile networks. They argue the networks should be considered a public interest, leading to stricter requirements for providing services to all. Especially in rural areas, operators should be able to share infrastructure in order to boost coverage. This includes providing network access to local players or new entrants who can help break the "oligopoly" of the three mobile operators, the associations said.
Federal Minister of Economics Peter Altmaier, who also attended the meeting with the Bundesnetzagentur, said he supported the idea of increased cooperation between operators in the expansion of networks.
However, according to the Handelsblatt's information, no national roaming requirement will be added in the revised auction proposal. Instead, the regulator can impose local roaming arrangements if operators are unable to reach agreement on a cooperation to cover white zones.