5G: more than a new generation of mobiles?

Mobile phone gen­er­a­tions change approx­im­ately every 10 years. Yet, more than any oth­er, the deploy­ment of 5G has ignited pub­lic debate ¹². The reas­on for this is largely due to the dif­fi­culty of defin­ing the chal­lenges of a tech­no­logy which, bey­ond its tech­nic­al innov­a­tions and asso­ci­ated ser­vices, in many respects rep­res­ents a major break­through. Admit­tedly, the first applic­a­tions will con­sist mainly of mak­ing exist­ing net­works dens­er, or even, in some coun­tries, com­plet­ing very high-speed cov­er­age. But 5G’s innov­a­tions, flex­ib­il­ity and per­form­ance will be a revolu­tion for the industry: it’s not just about see­ing movies on Net­flix faster. Unlike pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions, its mar­ket is mainly that of the indus­tri­al sec­tor, offer­ing, like fibre optics, a for­mid­able oppor­tun­ity for digitalisation.

Tech­nic­ally, 5G is a sys­tem with com­ple­ment­ary poten­tial that responds spe­cific­ally to dif­fer­ent needs. Firstly, 5G aims to avoid con­ges­tion of 4G by respond­ing to the annu­al doub­ling of data exchanged on tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions net­works. Second, 5G improves the qual­ity of mobile tele­com­mu­nic­a­tion ser­vices: for pub­lic use (speed, mobil­ity) and, to a great­er extent, for the spe­cif­ic needs of mul­tiple sec­tors such as health, energy, auto­mobile, loc­al author­it­ies, media, and agriculture.

There are sev­er­al types of innov­a­tion behind this poten­tial. Firstly, there is the capa­city ³ to massively con­nect many objects (tens of thou­sands of con­tain­ers in a port, for example). Secondly, it offers the pos­sib­il­ity of ensur­ing crit­ic­al, low-latency com­mu­nic­a­tions, par­tic­u­larly with the arrival of con­nec­ted autonom­ous vehicles, which require almost instant­an­eous reac­tions. Thirdly, it also provides the abil­ity to dynam­ic­ally mod­u­late the con­fig­ur­a­tion of a tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions net­work ⁴ to optim­ise its sim­ul­tan­eous use by applic­a­tions with dif­fer­ent con­straints (data volume, secur­ity, imme­di­acy, high speed) – for example, think of mul­tiple uses in pub­lic areas such as rail­way stations.

5G also relies on loc­al­ised use of new fre­quency ranges known as mil­li­metre fre­quen­cies – indoors or out­doors – open­ing up to par­tic­u­larly high band­widths and speeds; par­tic­u­larly use­ful for the remote con­trol and driv­ing of indus­tri­al machinery or robots. 5G also aims to improve the energy per­form­ance of mobile net­works by aggreg­at­ing sev­er­al fre­quen­cies, by mobil­ising act­ive “intel­li­gent” anten­nas (which are only activ­ated when neces­sary ⁵) or, on the con­trary, very small ones ⁶. Finally, 5G relies on flex­ible infra­struc­ture archi­tec­tures through the vir­tu­al­isa­tion of net­work func­tions ⁷ and the con­cen­tra­tion of base sta­tions in cooper­at­ive mode ⁸.

5G thus com­bines the imple­ment­a­tion of dis­rupt­ive tech­no­lo­gies (act­ive anten­nas, mil­li­metre waves, smart cells) with the pos­sib­il­ity of innov­a­tion, in a more pro­gress­ive man­ner, of app ser­vices, based on ini­ti­at­ives, play­ers and invest­ments made at dif­fer­ent levels. 5G should there­fore not be seen from a “techno-push” per­spect­ive, i.e. a tech­no­logy that is imposed and defines impacts in an unequi­voc­al man­ner. But in a “demand-pull vis­ion”, it is a set of tech­no­lo­gic­al resources form­ing a sys­tem, open­ing up the pos­sib­il­ity of new innov­a­tions and applic­a­tions, which com­pan­ies can seize.

The obser­va­tion of deploy­ments made today reflects this para­dox­ic­al per­cep­tion. On the one hand most experts, includ­ing oper­at­ors, insist on the fact that 5G (and its eco­nom­ic mod­el) mainly responds to the needs of major busi­ness sec­tors and indus­tries. The exper­i­ments opened by Arcep since 2018, as well as the devel­op­ments already under­way abroad, thus provide a good vis­ion of the vari­ous use cases for which 5G is expec­ted. These are: the equip­ment of large sports aren­as, pub­lic spaces such as sta­tions, ports and air­ports where indus­tri­al activ­ity and the pub­lic at large are com­bined, digit­al­isa­tion of indus­tri­al sec­tors such as the elec­tric and con­nec­ted auto­mobile sec­tor, improve­ment of health ser­vices (from tele­con­sulta­tion to remote inter­ven­tions), and sup­port­ing auto­ma­tion of spe­cif­ic indus­tri­al uses, par­tic­u­larly in high-risk environments.

How­ever, the super­vi­sion of deploy­ments by pub­lic play­ers such as Arcep ⁹ or ANFR ¹⁰ con­tin­ues to focus, as tra­di­tion­ally, on con­sumer uses. They reg­u­larly report, month after month, on the deploy­ment of 5G sites (30,092 author­ised in Novem­ber 2021, of which 19,824 are oper­a­tion­al). They ana­lyse the cov­er­age and com­pare the qual­ity of ser­vice offered to every­day users by each oper­at­or (speed and cov­er­age). These meas­ure­ments are import­ant, as they show that the pace of devel­op­ment is much faster than for 3G or 4G. How­ever, noth­ing has been done to cal­ib­rate the devel­op­ment of indus­tri­al uses.

Over­all, 5G rep­res­ents a real wall of invest­ment. It is not sur­pris­ing, there­fore, that its soci­et­al interest is a source of debate. On the one hand, the emphas­is on the needs of the gen­er­al pub­lic obscures those of busi­nesses. On the oth­er, eco­nom­ic mod­els of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tion oper­at­ors, equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­ers, plat­forms or applic­a­tion pro­viders, and user com­pan­ies are inter­twined. They call for broad inter­op­er­ab­il­ity of data, applic­a­tions, and net­works, but also cre­ate new forms of ver­tic­al com­pet­i­tion between infra­struc­tures, oper­at­ors, new inter­me­di­ar­ies, and play­ers in indus­tri­al sectors.

Sev­er­al ways of look­ing at the rise of 5G are thus emer­ging, depend­ing on wheth­er it is seen as a simple exten­sion of 4G, as a sup­port for loc­al private net­works, as an integ­ral part of oper­at­ors’ busi­ness offers, or as the basis for the digit­al­isa­tion of com­pan­ies and sup­ply chains. Far from simply rede­fin­ing the bal­ance between con­sumer and busi­ness uses, 5G’s func­tion­al­it­ies trans­late into new artic­u­la­tions between the nation­al and ter­rit­ori­al levels (city dis­tricts, busi­ness areas, com­pan­ies, sta­di­ums, or hospitals).

For nation­al and ter­rit­ori­al cov­er­age, oper­at­ors bear the costs (fre­quency pur­chases, site con­struc­tion and infra­struc­ture deploy­ment) ¹¹. Users thus have a tech­no­logy for which only the cost of use is charged to them (in ways that have yet to be sta­bil­ised). How­ever, they must bear the con­sid­er­able costs of appro­pri­ation, digit­isa­tion of pro­cesses, devel­op­ment of ser­vices and change man­age­ment. For loc­al and private deploy­ments, it is the com­pan­ies that invest in the con­struc­tion and main­ten­ance of their own infra­struc­ture. This gives power­ful indus­tri­al play­ers an advant­age, but the invest­ment wall is also an incent­ive for pool­ing strategies as seen in air­port areas or in large pro­jects such as the Olympic Games or smart cities.