Britain is planning a future where every populated area enjoys high quality standalone 5G, provided the current signal can first secure permission to cross the sitting room.
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology has opened a Mobile Market Review call for evidence, asking how the networks behind modern life can support businesses, communities and critical infrastructure. It is an ambitious question. A commuter trapped in a railway tunnel may offer a shorter answer, although it will probably involve less respect for the word resilient.
The review presents mobile connectivity as the backbone of everything from remote healthcare to manufacturing. It is also the backbone of the national ceremony in which somebody says “I can hear you now” before vanishing from the call with the serene confidence of a government strategy that has just discovered its own acronym.
Officials want evidence about transport, energy and water, all of which require dependable communications. This is sensible. A water company cannot be expected to manage a national emergency using the same connection that turns a train journey into a gallery of frozen faces and apologetic hand gestures.
The ambition is for all populated areas to benefit from higher quality standalone 5G by 2030. The phrase “populated areas” offers a useful administrative escape route. A village containing one cottage, a postbox and an extremely committed badger may spend several years being assessed for population before anyone has to explain the missing bar.
The review also asks how investment, competition and regulation should evolve as networks become more software based and connected to cloud services, satellites and other technologies. Britain is therefore constructing a communications system so advanced that the signal may eventually be able to explain why it failed, identify the relevant supplier and invite the customer to rate the explanation.
Evidence is invited from operators, infrastructure providers, technology companies, local authorities, public bodies, civil society, academia and investors. The public is included too, although a photograph of a phone displaying one bar may be dismissed as anecdotal unless it arrives with a methodology, a consultation response and proof that the phone was standing in the approved corner of the kitchen.
The review is meant to shape the market through the next decade, with standalone 5G offered as the platform for innovation, inclusion and growth. By then, Britain may enjoy seamless connectivity everywhere. Until that glorious moment, the country will continue pursuing the digital future from the one place where the router has briefly agreed to acknowledge the existence of the internet.
Source: GOV.UK.
