A commentary on the rollout of 5g mobile in the UK

• Author: Peter Jones,Daphne Comfort
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1993
• Published date: 01 February 2020
• Date: 01 February 2020

COMMENTARY

A commentary on the rollout of 5g mobile in the UK

Peter Jones |Daphne Comfort

The School of Business and Technology,

University of Gloucestershire, Cheltenham

Campus, Cheltenham, UK

Correspondence

Peter Jones, The School of Business and

Technology, University of Gloucestershire,

Cheltenham Campus, Cheltenham

GL50 2RH, UK.

Email: pjones@glos.ac.uk

The first waves of the fifth generation of mobile phone technology, 5G, are breaking

on the telecommunication shores of the United Kingdom. The government's ambition

is for the United Kingdom to be a global leader in 5G mobile technology, but its

widespread commercial deployment faces a number of barriers and challenges. The

aims of this commentary paper are to outline the main characteristics and rollout of

5G mobile technology, to explore the forces driving and shaping the 5G market, to

examine the perceived barriers to the deployment of 5G networks, and to offer some

wider reflections on the rollout of 5G.

1|INTRODUCTION

Mobile phones have become a necessity for many people throughout

the world enabling them to keep in touch with family and business

associates and to have access to e‐mail and social media. In a House

of Commons Briefing Paper on mobile coverage in the United

Kingdom published in February 2019, Hutton and Baker (2019) argued

“mobile services are now at the heart of how most people stay in

touch and go online.”The mobile phone market, which exceeds the

ownership and use of landline phones in most countries of the world,

has experienced rapid development in the last three decades. The first

waves of the next generation of commercial mobile technology, 5G,

began breaking on the telecommunication shores of the United

Kingdom in 2019. EE launched its 5G service in London, Cardiff,

Edinburgh, Belfast, Birmingham, and Manchester in May 2019, and

in the same month 2019, Vodafone announced that it would launch

5G in Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool,

and London in July 2019 for both consumers and businesses. 5G “is

expected to deliver faster and better mobile broadband, and to enable

more revolutionary uses in sectors such as manufacturing, transport

and healthcare. This may create benefits for people and businesses

and expand the role of wireless connectivity within the economy

and society”(Ofcom, 2018). While “this Government has a clear ambi-

tion for the UK to be a global leader in the next generation of mobile

technology”(Department for Culture, Media and Sport and UK

Treasury 2018), there are concerns about the speed and the extent

of 5G rollout. Analysys Mason Limited (2018), for example, identified

a range of barriers, relating to legislation, deployment, and communi-

cation, to the commercial development of 5G. With these thoughts

in mind, the aims of this commentary paper are to outline the main

characteristics and rollout of 5G mobile technology, to explore the

forces driving and shaping the 5G market, to examine the barriers to

the deployment of 5G networks, and to offer some wider reflections

on the rollout of 5G.

2|5G

5G is widely used as shorthand for the fifth generation of mobile com-

munication technologies. In this context, the term “generation”usually

refers to a change in the fundamental nature of the service. The early

mobile phones (retrospectively described as 1G), which were launched

first in Japan in 1979 and then in Europe from the early 1980s

onwards, used analogue radio signals and were simply used to make

calls. 2G, which used digital networks and which first appeared in

1991, enabled users to send and receive text messages and pictures.

The introduction of 3G enabled Internet connections to be made from

mobile phones and 4G introduced improved download and upload

speeds, faster response times, and clearer voice calls. The mobile com-

munications industry claims that the main advantages 5G has over its

predecessor are much faster data download and upload speeds, wider

coverage, more stable connections, making better use of the radio

spectrum, and enabling far more devices to access the mobile Internet

at the same time. The physical hardware for 5G uses large numbers of

small antennae and operates on different radio spectrum frequencies

to 4G and operators have argued that 5G will also demand enhanced

fibre networks for backhaul, which in simple terms connects mobile

users to the Internet.

More specifically, Ofcom (2018) identified “three broad categories

of use for 5G,”namely, “improved quality of experience for wireless

DOI: 10.1002/pa.1993

J PublicAffairs. 2020;20:e1993.

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1993

© 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa 1of7