The decision about the conditions of the auction of the 5G licenses in Germany is due soon and every day there are news from mobile operators, new market entrees, IoT service providers, politicians, a.o. about their requirements for the license allocation. Each group tries to push its interests, but what would be the ideal solution for the customers and the economy at all?

After 2 days at the Data Centre World conference you get the impression that everyone is only waiting that the new networks go live to finally be able to launch the innovative services: IoT and Big Data applications, autonomous car driving, telemedicine, high bandwidths available everywhere and many more services. If you then read the opinions about the allocation rules and policies for the new 5G spectra, you get serious doubts that at the end the mobile operators will deliver the networks which are required for the different use cases. Whereas the first networks and services have been tested already in South Korea, Japan and China, the stakeholders in Germany still argue about the best way. The best way for whom?

Again, Germany is threatened to lose the contact to the top countries, not only to Asia, but as well in Europe, e.g. Finland and the Netherlands. Where Siemens delivered the hardware for the telecommunication networks in the past, Asia is now leading with suppliers who have taken the top spot from European companies in 5G technology. Ericsson and Nokia, yet leading for the LTE roll-out, are now far behind Huawei and Samsung.

So, what will be the ideal network for Germany:

• 100% coverage country-wide
  Autonomous car driving, telemedicine and many of the IoT applications, e.g. payment or localization services, require a reliable network without holes! Compromises due to the expected costs of a full network roll-out are showstoppers for these services and must not be accepted.
• Open access for all service and content providers
  Of course, each mobile operator tends to protect its investments and aims to keep the network closed, but this approach blocks innovations and a solid competition of the best services.
• Collaborations to achieve a cost-efficient and environment-friendly network roll-out
  Many people are afraid that after wind generators and power poles now also an unmanageable number of mobile radio antenna systems will ruin the countryside. The regulator should push the successful license owners to sit together and to reach an agreement on an optimized roll-out concept.

No doubt, mobile operators need to have the chance to operate the new 5G networks in a profitable way. Nevertheless, the government and the industry should have the requirements of the customers, business and residential customers as well as machine-to-machine applications, in focus and should be aware of the importance of the 5G networks for the business location Germany when determine license fees and conditions and policies for 5G mobile operators.