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Government instructs regulator to make temporary licences available to researchers in 5G space.
The Belgian government has given the go-ahead to the country’s telecoms regulator to open up high-bandwidth spectrum to companies seeking to conduct trials of 5G mobile technology.
Alexander De Croo, whose role includes serving as minister of telecoms and the digital agenda, confirmed to Belgian newspaper L’Echo that the state instructed the Belgian Institute for Postal services and Telecommunications (BIPT) to find spectrum that could be temporarily allocated to businesses and research centres looking to undertake 5G trials.
BIPT is already working with Ericsson to analyse the best frequency bands for 5G, concentrating primarily on high band spectrum, the paper explained.
The state has set out a number of conditions governing the temporary licences, including requiring that Belgian researchers or start-ups must be involved in any project.
It has yet to be established how investment in 5G will be financed, but methods exist to avoid the entire burden falling on operators, the report said.
In line with current thinking elsewhere in the world, the paper added that commercial 5G deployments are unlikely to emerge before 2020.
