Europe’s ambition to regain technological leadership will not be realised without leadership in connectivity, especially at a time when multilateralism is in question. Now more than ever, European telecommunication technology providers need local demand to be sustainable, European digital services developers need fast and secure networks to bring their innovations to as many users as possible, and Europe’s diverse productive sectors need a vibrant ecosystem of ICT networks and services to facilitate innovation in their different fields.
It is time to lay the foundations to make all this possible, inter alia by ensuring that in the future mobile operators will have the possibility to access new licensed spectrum under appropriate technical and economic conditions.
European CTOs: an open letter to the authorities
Chief technology officers of the main telecoms operators, including Telefónica, have sent an open letter to the EU and European authorities, as CEOs did in October 2024. In the letter, the CTOs highlight the benefits to our competitiveness as a region of making available to mobile operators the only mid-band spectrum available and suitable for 6G deployment, rather than setting it aside to expand the capacity of WiFi networks.
The risk of losing European leadership in 6G
Without the upper 6GHz Europe would not have a clean band on which to start 6G deployments. A large amount of mid-band spectrum is in the agenda for WRC-27, but in Europe those frequencies are being used for military purposes and only a very small fraction will realistically be made available for other uses. Existing mobile bands are also not a viable option, because by the time 6G becomes commercially available, they will be saturated in many countries and with no room to introduce a new technology with a differentiated user experience.
6G in the 6 GHz band will be designed to operate with 200 MHz carriers, meaning that allocating less than 600 MHz to mobile in a three player market would hinder the capacity of operators to run and deploy their networks efficiently, and limit the potential benefits of future 6G services to the end users.
WiFi has alternative paths for growth
As integrated fixed and mobile operators, and providers of connectivity for businesses and consumers, the signatories of the letter are entitled to state that, despite the demands of the WiFi community, the spectrum already allocated is sufficient to meet the expected demand for local networks even in very optimistic scenarios.
In fact, if demand were to skyrocket in certain homes or businesses to levels well above those expected, the optimal solution would not be to expand the spectrum used by WiFi in the mid-bands, but to install more access points distributed across the space to be covered. These access points could in turn be equipped with frequencies in higher ranges for use cases to be developed that may require very wide contiguous spectrum channels.
The US precedent and its impact on European strategy
As a final thought, we cannot forget that the source of the request to make this band available for WiFi in Europe lies in the US decision to allocate the entire 6 GHz band to unlicensed uses such as WiFi. Europe has already made available a large block of 480 MHz for WIFi in the lower part of the band, that remains widely unused. Adding the upper part gives WiFi technology a free option to access more spectrum in Europe if they at some point need it, but at the large opportunity cost of preventing European firms from taking a leading role in the development and use of 6G. The picture is also not complete without taking into account that the US is already working to make available to mobile operators new licences in the mid-bands on which to base the future of mobile networks, while in Europe those frequencies are not in sight.
