The EU reached a breakthrough in negotiations over new rules to coordinate mobile spectrum licensing, according to European Commission vice-president Andrus Ansip. The agreement between the Commission, European Parliament and Council should see licences in the EU available for longer periods and more spectrum released for 5G.
The European Commission had called for spectrum licences across the EU to be valid at least 20 years, in order to provide more investment certainty for operators. This had been resisted by some EU states, who wanted to retain more national discretion in licensing. Stefan Koreneef, telecom attache in the Dutch mission to the EU, said on Twitter that a compromise was reached to set a minimum of 15-year licences with optional five-year extension. In addition, the states agreed to a voluntary peer review process for spectrum auctions, as part of efforts to coordinate spectrum terms more across the EU.
Pilar del Castillo, the European Parliament's rapporteur on the legislation, said the Parliament and Council also agreed that spectrum for 5G would be available for use by the end of 2020.
Ansip said the deal on spectrum was a "key step" towards completing the full reform of EU telecom regulation, known as the Electronic Communications Code. The Commission has said it aims to complete the entire package by April. The next phase of trilogue negotiations will look at the wholesale access rules in the code.
