Notice for the launch of the public consultation on the draft BEREC Guide to the BEREC 5G Radar and 5G Radar

Document number: BoR (20) 126

Document date: 16-06-2020

Date of registration: 16-06-2020

Document type:
Author: BEREC

As decided during the Board of Regulators (December 2019) that BEREC shall continue working on a report with further analysis and stronger focus, and with involvement of (co-chairs) of other working groups, therefore, BEREC prepared 2 documents: i) Guide to the BEREC 5G radar and ii) the Radar (interactive visualization). Aim of those documentsto anticipate any changes to regulation that may be required to keep pace with innovation.

”Enhanced mobile broadband” will be an initial driver to 5G as data consumption is expected to grow exponentially in the future. This will require careful planning and agreements with municipalities and property owners. The large number of new sites may also make it necessary for operators to share infrastructure. Property owners on the other hand may have objections to housing multiple base stations from several MNOs in the same building, etc.

The development of 5G services will not happen at once, but is evolving gradually. In order to enable an end-to-end service between multiple networks, the NRAs need to make a regulatory judgment of the need of obligations for national roaming and interconnection.

From the initial list and the stakeholder input it was concluded that there are many regulatory aspects that need attention. However, not all the aspects need attention at the same time. 5G will be gradually introduced. Many Member States are now issuing the required spectrum. Aspects related to roll-out will probably need earlier attention than issues related to network slicing. In order to help NRAs prioritizing the projects to address the identified aspects, this follow-up report presents a radar plotting the 5G developments according to the anticipated time horizon. The radar is complemented with a background paper, the Guide to the BEREC 5G radar.

The Guide has the following structure:

  1. Chapter 1 describes practical outline of the development of 5G services that will not happen at once, but is evolving gradually. In order to enable an end-to-end service between multiple networks, the NRAs need to make a regulatory judgment of the need of obligations.
  2. Chapter 2 talks about use cases and regulatory challenges that EU Member States and NRAs will face in the near future.
  3. Chapter 3 provides summary and conclusions as each phase of the gradual introduction of 5G will have its own aspects that may need regulatory attention.
  4. Chapter 4 gives an explanation on how to interpret the 5G radar.
  5. Annex 1 explains the relevance and timing of the development related to 5G.

Important to note: i) Annex 1 of the draft BEREC Guide to the 5G Radar is the founding document for the 5G Radar; ii) 5G Radar looks at the topics from the BEREC perspective, the individual stakeholder perspective might be different, ii) timing indicated on the radar suggest when BEREC should be prepared to deal with the issue, meaning that actual work starts beforehand, iii) Relevance of the topic is pointed out by placing it closer to the vertical axis.

 

To this end, stakeholders are invited in particular to answer the following questions related to the draft BEREC Guide to the 5G Radar and 5G Radar:

1) Does the guide to the radar correctly reflect the issues – please give supporting reasons?

2) What are views on indicated priorities in particular for small cells at this point – please give supporting reasons?

3) Is there anything omitted from the radar, and why is it important that it should be included now?

Practical details of the public consultation

In accordance with the BEREC policy on public consultations, BEREC will publish a summary of all received contributions, respecting confidentiality requests.

The public consultation will run from 16 June 2020 to 31 July 2020. 

All stakeholders are invited to submit their contributions to the following e-mail address:  [email protected]. Further enquiries about the consultation including registration with the online platform may also be submitted to this address.

The overall size of the e-mail (including attachments) should not be larger than 2 MB. 

After submitting the contribution via e-mail, an automatic reply will be generated. If this confirmation e-mail is not received, the submission of the contribution was not successful and it should be submitted again.

We strongly encourage all stakeholders to submit their contributions as early as possible. Contributions received after the above mentioned deadline will not be taken into account.

Contributions should preferably be sent in English. 

This public consultation is organised mainly in BEREC online public consultation platform   https://www.discuto.io/en/consultation/33831 in a way that allows participants to submit their comments, to provide feedback on comments and parts of the text or to upload their public or confidential files in every section.

It also provides the possibility to download the “word” consultation document for organisations and stakeholders that would like to share it with their partners to consolidate their views and comments in a single file input.

A single file input can be also uploaded on the platform at any “Add comment” section of the discussion, ensuring the classification of this input as public or confidential.

However, in case you send your comments by e-mail, your answers should be organised according to the requested structure (i.e. paragraph by paragraph) in order to facilitate processing the responses. 

All contributions will be published on the BEREC website, taking into account requests for confidentiality and publication of personal data. Any such requests should be clearly indicated as: “Consider this contribution as confidential” or, if submitted via e-mail, by clearly stating which information is considered confidential. 

Please note that it is also possible to submit both a confidential and a public version of your contribution on the email address:  [email protected] .