5G Mobile

The Swiss telecoms regulator, named the Federal Communications Commission or ComCom, has set the date of the next auctions for 5th generation mobile technologies frequencies to January 2019. These auctions will allow operators to obtain the right to use these frequencies for the next 15 years. The novelty was the opening of a lower frequency in the 700 MHz band. Lower frequencies allow the waves to travel further. The remaining bands will be 1.4 GHz, 2.6 GHz and 3.5 GHz.

Swisscom has already announced that it will invest in 5G and will certainly be the first national operator to offer this service in 2019. There are very few surprises regarding frequency auctions because ComCom has decided to introduce operator quotas so that each of the three operators can hold spectrum in all bands. In addition, operators are not ready to renew their incredible auctions at the turn of the century on 3G frequencies. ComCom has set a minimum price of CHF 220 million for the entire spectrum.

What will 5G finally bring to customers? The speed may increase, but the main advantage will be a decrease in latency. This is the minimum interval required to establish a data connection. This aspect is extremely important in machine-to-machine communications, especially in critical situations such as autonomous driving. For example, latency is of the order of 40 to 60 milliseconds with 4G. In the future, with the 5G, latency could fall to a range of 1 to 10 ms only.