Who wins and who loses in a fifth-generation country
Details are now known of the national 5G strategy, the plan that opens a new stage in the rollout of the communications networks of the future. Phase zero had winners, but also losers.
The Government has finally lifted the veil on the 5G it wants to have in Portugal. It presented an ambitious five-year plan that will require heavy investment from Portuguese operators, with the aim that, by 2025, 90% of the population will have access to mobile broadband services with speeds equal to or higher than those of today’s fibre packages.
But the fifth generation of communications network will not only arrive five years from now. By the end of 2020, the Executive wants to have not one but two cities with 5G coverage, doubling the European Commission’s target. It is not yet known which cities they will be (guesses: Coimbra inland; and Matosinhos or Lisbon on the coast).
AI translation from the Portuguese. First published in ECO on 7 February 2020.