Bouygues Telecom CEO Richard Viel has confirmed to Les Echos that the company has made a formal demand to French regulator Arcep for a 6-month delay in the final stage of the 5G award process. This follows the move by Bouygues group’s CEO Martin Bouygues, who last week wrote an article in Le Figaro arguing that the spectrum auction should not resume before end-2020 or early-2021.
Viel remarked that a 6-month delay would have no real impact on the sector, arguing that 5G networks would only start making a real difference after 2023. He explained that the request was motivated by the concern that mobile operators would be distracted by 5G instead of prioritising investment in rural areas of the country, where LTE coverage must still be improved to meet the needs of mobile customers.
To this end, Viel is proposing to revisit the ‘New Deal’ programme agreed by the country’s four mobile networks with the government in 2018. He noted, in particular, the need to extend the partnerships with its rivals under the programme. Operators have already committed to have at least 5,000 additional cell sites each. Viel estimates that this objective should be increased by 20 or 30 percent, supported by network sharing.
