What are the 5G auctions that start this Tuesday for?

5G is coming to France, but at what price for operators?

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• This Tuesday is the launch of the 5G auctions.

• Four major operators will be fighting to get the maximum 5G frequency in the days to come.

• But what is that for ?

  And what are the real issues?

  20 minutes

  takes stock

3, 2, 1… Sell!

This Tuesday begins the auction on 5G.

Four mobile operators will be fighting to buy 5G frequencies for use in the future.

And as the matter is a little unclear for the moment, at

, we take stock for you.

What are 5G auctions?

Guillaume Vaquero, telecoms expert for the Wavestone firm, explains to us the challenges of this Tuesday: the four major operators in the country (Orange, SFR, Free and Bouygues) will position themselves to buy 5G “blocks” per 10 megahertz.

Like conventional auctions, the highest bidder will win the block.

The more blocks an operator has, the better its territory and network coverage will be in the future once 5G is fully deployed in France.

Can one of the four operators find themselves without 5G coverage?

Well no, because these 5G auctions are only the second phase of the process.

Guillaume Vaquero tells us that to prevent an operator more powerful than the others - Orange not to name it - arrogates to itself all the 5G shares, the State started with a first phase of selling 5G blocks at price fixed.

Of the 310 megahertz in total for 5G, "200 were thus sold at a fixed price, 50 megahertz per operator".

It is therefore eleven 10 megahertz blocks that are auctioned this Tuesday, while two-thirds of 5G have already been provided by the State and fairly distributed between operators.

"What is at stake with these auctions is not which operator will or will not have 5G - everyone is already guaranteed to have it - but who will have the best and most efficient network", Guillaume Vaquero analyzes.

This state fixed price was not implemented during the early days of 4G, "where everything was played out on auctions with each operator being able to bet what he wanted on all the blocks", Guillaume Vaquero notes.

"We can therefore see in this intervention the importance that the State places in the non-monopoly for 5G".

Especially that in the long term the old 2G, 3G, 4G networks should disappear, all the more reason not to allow the total control of a single operator.

Can the current mistrust of 5G lower the amount of bids?

No, according to Florence Presson, consultant in digital strategy and circular economy.

"The stakes are too high for operators to take the risk of undervaluing this product," she supports.

Especially since for the consultant, it is necessary to get out of the cartoonish debates on the issue for individuals to download their video in one second rather than three: the real contribution of 5G should be at the professional level.

“Even if there is real added value in energy expenditure for individuals, their opinions should therefore not be taken into account too much for prices.

"

Professionally, on the other hand, videoconferences could for example be held with the assurance of no bugs or delays, or medical operations could more be controlled remotely.

"It will become essential, an absolute necessity and operators will pay the price accordingly", she insists.

To fully understand the issues, Florence Presson uses the metaphor: “Before, the occupational health of a country depended on its road infrastructure: we managed to have enough roads and means of transport to be able to ensure the good professional performance of the country. country.

Today and a fortiori tomorrow, it is the mobile infrastructure that will determine this.

In other words, no, operators should not be timid in their calls for tenders.

After these auctions, is everything over?

Once the auctions are over, there will still be a third step, "the most technical", warns Guillaume Vaquero.

After each operator has determined how many blocks he owns, it remains to determine who owns which block.

“It's a little technical, insists the telecoms expert, but roughly, the operators will want their different blocks to be at frequencies that are close or even glued, in order to be able to group them together.

The battle for 5G is therefore far from over.

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