5G (illustration). – Lionel BONAVENTURE / AFP
5G antennas have been activated for a month in several large cities in mainland France, but very high speed is not yet present in overseas France, except for part of Guyana. This situation should nevertheless change by 2022, reports the government in a
communicated published this Tuesday, April 20.
A different procedure
The first offers should be available in Reunion and Mayotte at the beginning of next year. For this, a public consultation on the financial terms of allocation of frequencies on these two islands (700 MHz and 3.5 GHz band) will be launched and will take place until May 20.
To meet this schedule, it will first be necessary to allocate 5G frequencies to the various operators present in the two territories. But the award procedure chosen by the government will be different from that which took place in France to decide between Orange, SFR, Bouygues Telecom and Free Mobile, because the government wants to avoid overbidding.
Solicit local operators
“The government plans to strictly limit the financial contributions of operators by setting the minimum price for the allocation of frequencies during the auction phase at 0 €, and by strongly capping the level of fees,” said the press release.
By way of comparison, for the hexagonal 5G market, operators spent almost 1.4 billion euros to distribute the different frequency blocks, recalls Numerama. This measure will allow local operators, such as Zeop, Maore Mobile and Only, to take part in the 5G revolution alongside the big names in the sector. The money that is not devoted to the purchase of frequencies can be dedicated to the establishment of infrastructures.