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A telecoms company has criticised the States’ snail's pace on agreeing 5G regulations in the island noting “protracted delays”.
Clear Mobitel, a Welsh-registered company, has held telecoms licences in Guernsey and Jersey since 2009 and stated its intention to launch 5G fixed wireless access and a cell network in 2019.
But five years later 5G, which promises to bring superfast wireless speeds and has been touted as a key lever for economic growth and Guernsey’s recovery from covid, is running behind schedule.
“Our understanding is that there is a bottleneck in both government and the regulators. Whether public opinion can unblock this remains to be seen,” a spokesperson for Clear Mobitel said.
“We believe that to some extent that this is a result of the recent deliberations over the Sure-Airtel merger. This has taken up too much regulatory time and is contrary to the public interest,” it said.
That merger recently won regulatory approval in Jersey with reduced competition concerns alleviated by a commitment for the CI Co-op to set up a virtual mobile network onSure’s infrastructure. Sure is also committing to invest around £50m in a 5G network, but the deal still needs to be greenlit in Guernsey.
Nothing can happen until the Guernsey Competition & Regulatory Authority issues bespoke licences to interested businesses, but it can’t do that until deputies approve a policy making clear the minimum standards and the terms.
The Economic DevelopmentCommittee had intended to bring a policy letter on 5G to the States at the end of last year, but it remains to be seen.The States had at one point hoped to have licences issued by 2023.
Jersey, on the other hand, started the process of issuing licences to JT and Sure in July 2023, and JT along with its partner Ericsson have recently opened a 5G testing facility with a view to rolling out the technology island-wide by the end of next year.
Express has questioned Economic Development on the progress of its 5G policy and when it might go before the States.
Pictured: It's unclear when the States will sign-off on 5G regulations.
Clear Mobitel’s website continues to state that a commercial rollout will start in Jersey by the end of 2022 and that they “expect to roll out of 5G services in Guernsey in 2023.
“Our company will provide retail and customer services on island and will have these facilities based in a large island retail organisation.”
It said this would bring “higher speed, higher capacity, lower latency and secure networks to the population and businesses in the island”.
It recently revealed it would invest $200m into Zimbabwe’s telecoms sector: “This announcement underlines [our] commitment to telecommunications and investment in 5G services and innovations."
The company did accept that global concerns have slowed down the rollout of 5G, particularly due to spying concerns from the Chinese firm Huawei which saw the United States, UK and Channel Islands ban the hardware.
“The existing operators do have a legacy problem with security as a result of previously using equipment from Chinese suppliers which will be outlawed,” Clear Mobitel said. “Existing equipment will need to be replaced over the coming years in order to comply, the exact timing is yet to be decided. Clear Mobitel has no such problem as all our systems are already approved”.
The split of the island’s regulatory bodies from a single has also been blamed for slowing progress down, along with the pandemic and Brexit.
Tens of millions of public cash has also been pumped into the fibre rollout being led by Sure, which still has a few years left to run.
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