Newsletter 24 – April 2021

Horizon Europe and the Smart Networks and Services partnership

In 2018, the Commission proposed a 100 billion EUR research and innovation programme Horizon Europe to succeed to Horizon 2020. The European Parliament and the Council of the EU reached a provisional agreement in March 2019 on Horizon Europe. The provisional agreement was then endorsed mid-April 2019. A political agreement on Horizon Europe was reached on 11 December 2020. The budget was set at 95.5 billion EUR (including 5.4 billion EUR from the Next GenerationEU, programme of the EU for Recovery from Covid-19 crisis).

Horizon Europe is the 9th European Research and Development Framework Programme. It came into force on January 1st, 2021 for the period from 2021 to 2027 and expects to allow 95.5 billion EUR to research (including 5.4 billion EUR from NextGenerationEU, programme of the EU for Recovery from Covid-19 crisis).

It tackles climate change, helps to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and boosts the EU’s competitiveness and growth. The programme facilitates collaboration and strengthens the impact of research and innovation in developing, supporting and implementing EU policies while tackling global challenges. It supports creating and better dispersing of excellent knowledge and technologies. It creates jobs, fully engages the EU’s talent pool, boosts economic growth, promotes industrial competitiveness and optimises investment impact within a strengthened European Research Area. Legal entities from the EU and associated countries can participate.

Horizon Europe includes new elements compared to previous Framework Programmes:

• European Innovation Council: Support for innovations with potential breakthrough and disruptive nature with scale-up potential that may be too risky for private investors. This is 70% of the budget earmarked for SMEs. It will be a one-stop-shop
• Missions: Sets of measures to achieve bold, inspirational and measurable goals within a set timeframe. There are 5 main missions as part of Horizon Europe.
• Open science policy: Mandatory open access to publications and open science principles are applied throughout the programme.
• New approach to partnerships: Objective-driven and more ambitious partnerships with industry in support of EU policy objectives

As the Horizon 2020 framework programme comes to an end and the new Horizon Europe framework programme launches, the 5G IA, as the industrial partner of the 5G PPP, is preparing for the evolution of the 5G activities into the Smart Networks and Services (SNS) context within the Horizon Europe framework programme.

Within the SNS, the 5G IA will be the private side representative, jointly managing the Partnership with the EU. The SNS Partnership aims to support European technological sovereignty on Smart Networks and Services. It will contribute to enable the digital and green transitions and will allow European players to develop the technology capacities for 6G systems as the basis for future digital services towards 2030. The SNS proposal, which was prepared by the 5G IA, together with other leading ICT organisations, can be found, together with other documents and information at https://5g-ia.eu/sns-horizon-europe/. 5G IA invites SNS stakeholders to join the association to contribute in the shaping and implementing of the SNS Partnership.

What is the status of Horizon 2020 to date?

The  Horizon 2020 work programme comprised an introduction, 18 thematic sections and the general annexes describing general rules such as standard admissibility conditions and eligibility criteria, selection and award criteria, etc.

It was made of four mutually reinforcing Focus Areas that cut across the programme boundaries and were aligned to major policy priorities: ‘Building a low-carbon, climate resilient future’ (LC); ‘Connecting economic and environmental gains – the Circular Economy’ (CE); ‘Digitising and transforming European industry and services‘ (DT); and ‘Boosting the effectiveness of the Security Union‘ (SU). Together these Focus Areas gave a combined budget of over 7 billion EUR (2018-2020). A dedicated section brought together a spectrum of activities on next generation battery technologies to drive the transition towards a de-carbonised society.

5G issues were housed in the 5G PPP initiative between the European Commission and European ICT industry (ICT manufacturers, telecommunications operators, service providers, SMEs and researcher Institutions). The 5G PPP is now in its third phase which started in June 2018. The challenge for the 5G Public Private Partnership (5G PPP) was to secure Europe’s leadership in the particular areas where Europe was strong or where there was potential for creating new markets such as smart cities, e-health, intelligent transport, education or entertainment & media. The 5G PPP initiative reinforced the European industry to successfully compete on global markets and open new innovation opportunities. It “opened a platform that helped us reach our common goal to maintain and strengthen the global technological lead”.

The key challenges for the 5G Infrastructure PPP were:

• Providing 1000 times higher wireless area capacity and more varied service capabilities compared to 2010
• Saving up to 90% of energy per service provided. The main focus will be in mobile communication networks where the dominating energy consumption comes from the radio access network
• Reducing the average service creation time cycle from 90 hours to 90 minutes
• Creating a secure, reliable and dependable Internet with a “zero perceived” downtime for services provision
• Facilitating very dense deployments of wireless communication links to connect over 7 trillion wireless devices serving over 7 billion people
• Ensuring for everyone and everywhere the access to a wider panel of services and applications at lower cost

Overall, 88 projects have been launched in three phases. Phases 1 and 2 are over and related projects have ended. Phase 3. 3 until 3.6 is still ongoing.

Phase 3.1 Key Achievements from the 5G PPP include over 100 highlighted results from projects in Phase 3 under 20 program level achievements. Key achievements from all the completed projects can be viewed on a phase by phase basis. Key achievements for phase 1 are available here.  Achievements for phase 2 are there. Phase 3.1 key achievements can also be accessed online. “Key achievements v 3.1” considering the latest accomplishments of the 5G PPP Phase 3.4 “5G Long Term Evolution” projects and additional breakthroughs of some of Phase 3.3 “Advanced 5G Validation trials across multiple vertical industries” projects

The reported 100 achievements have been grouped in 11 different categories: 1-Performance Evaluation, 2-Cellular systems, Functional, Logical & Physical Architecture 3-Radio Access Network 4-Fronthaul, Backhaul and MetroHaul, 5-Technology Enablers 6-Network Management and Orchestration of services 7-Software Networks 8-Security, Privacy, Resilience 9-Services Platforms and Programming Tools NetApps 10-Verticals Experimentation, Trials and Pilots 10.1- Industry 4.0 10.2- Agriculture and agrifood 10.3- Automotive 10.4- Transport and Logistics 10.5 Smart Cities and Utilities 10.6- Public safety 10.7- Smart(air)Ports 10.8-Energy 10.9- eHealth & Wellness 10.10- Media & Entertainment, Tourism  and 11- Business, Standardization and Regulation.

5G status in Europe: 27 5G countries

Europe has seen much progress and intense sepctrum activity in the last weeks. Seven EU countries have assigned spectrum or made spectrum available on demand subject to coordination in all 5G pioneer bands: Denmark, Italy, Finland, Germany (26 GHz on demand), Greece, Slovenia and the UK (26 GHz on demand).

• The 700 MHz band has been assigned in sixteen European countries (EU27 and the UK): Austria (September 2020), Czech Republic (November 2020), Cyprus (December 2020), Denmark (March 2019), France (November 2015), Finland (November 2016), Germany (June 2015), Greece (December 2020), Hungary (March 2020), Italy (October 2018), Luxembourg (2020), Netherlands (July 2020), Slovakia (November 2020), Slovenia (April 2021), Sweden (December 2018) and the UK (March 2021).
• Spectrum within 3.4-3.8 GHz frequency band has already been assigned in accordance with 5G technical conditions in 17 countries (EU-27 countries and the UK): Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom.
• Spectrum within 26 GHz frequencies has already been assigned in Denmark (April 2021), Italy (October 2018), Finland (June 2020), Greece (December 2020) and Slovenia (April 2021). In the UK and Germany, local licences are available on demand.

Multiband auctions in Portugal and Denmark are ongoing. Both countries started auctions in March 2021. Portugal is auctioning 700 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2.1 GHz, 2.6 GHz and 3.6 GHz spectrum. 1500MHz, 2100MHz, 2300MHz, 3.5GHz and 26GHz spectrum is for sale in Denmark.

Adoption is still low but is expected to increase as Apple unveiled its first 5G-capable device Fall 2020.

5G status in Asia: massive adoption and deployment

Australia has fully assigned 26  GHz and 28 GHz spectrum (24.7-29.5 GHz) in two stages. The first one took place in December 2020 for spectrum in 24.7-25.1 GHz and 27.5-29.5 GHz. The remaining part of 26 and 28 GHz spectrum (25.1-27.5 GHz) was auctioned in April 2021. Later in 2021, Australia plans to auction lower frequencies for 5G (850/900 MHz).

In 2020, 5G succeeded in making a massive entrance in Asian advanced mobile markets. In 2021, it continues on the same path. 5G adoption in China continues to grow at an unprecedented pace. The country ended 2020 with 322 million 5G subscriptions. In South Korea, 11.9 million 5G subscribers were registered at year-end 2020. NTT DoCoMo targets 2.5 million 5G subscribers as at end March 2021. If China is way ahead, Chinese reported data provides overstated figures. In fact, national players report “5G-full package subscribers”. Not every 5G package subscribers uses a 5G capable-device, meaning that every “5G package subscriber” cannot be counted as 5G subscribers having access to a 5G network. What is more, some players propose 5G plans at a lower price than a 4G one, pushing aggressively for migration. The portion of 5G plan holders using to a 4G network is difficult to assess.

On the deployment side, Chinese figures appear overstated too. When a base station is using for example three frequency bands in China, Chinese players report three “logical sites” while Western players and regulators only report one “physical” site. This leads to overstated figures by a factor of maybe 3.

Asian mobile players have also started migrating to 5G standalone.

5G status in North America

Players are now focusing network deployment. All major US cities enjoyed 5G services even partially as at end 2020. Coverage is still patchy but will increase slightly with players using DSS and low frequencies. Speeds delivered over 5G are higher compared to 4G with no details on how faster they are. AT&T advertises “improved” speeds while Verizon mentioned “faster” speeds for 5G without any backing figures disclosed.

US mobile players have also started migrating to 5G standalone.  Dish is expected to launch 5G services in the third quarter 2021.

Deployment in the recently auctioned 3.5 GHz spectrum should begin at the end of 2021. Auction 107 (3.70-3.98 GHz) which ended in February 2021 was the most expensive auction ever (more than AWS-3) generating 81.2 billion USD (67.2 billion EUR). In addition to the bids, spectrum holders will have to pay for the relocation of existing users estimated at a little less than 10 billion USD (8.3 billion EUR).

The FCC continues to open up more spectrum. The 2.5 GHz frequencies (Auction 108) will be auctioned later in 2021. The 3.45-3.55 GHz could be made available for 5G in Auction 110 in early October 2021. A number of additional spectrum bands will be made available from 2022. The auction of 50 MHz in 1300-1350 MHz frequencies is considered. The auction of another mmwave band (probably the 42 GHz) is expected in 2022. After 2022, the lower 3 GHz, the 4.8 GHz and the 7 GHz bands could be sold.