New 4G frequencies, for what? – The echoes

“ For the next ten years, it’s no ! “Patrick Drahi launched, at a hearing at the National Assembly in May, about these new frequencies purchased by telecom operators today. It was a bit excessive from the boss Altice (SFR).

These 4G frequencies will primarily help meet the uses of mobile broadband exploding. The French are watching more and more videos, television or movies via their smartphone, which they also used to connect to the internet to check emails, download attachments, listen to music … The result: Mobile data traffic increases of over 60% per year on average in France for several years, according to ARCEP. And that’s not all: Ericsson provides increased tenfold in the world by 2020. In the hexagon, customers are becoming more demanding: according to Swedish equipment manufacturer, among customers who are considering changing mobile operator, they would first because of a too slow data connectivity in 3G and 4G smartphone.

Frequencies “golden”

We now understand the importance of “telcos” to arm Frequency for the future. Those of the “Band 700″ as they say in the jargon of the industry, and therefore just acquired, are all the more valuable it are frequencies “low”. It describes the “golden” because they enjoy a very good quality of propagation, they are particularly well suited to cover rural areas and penetrate very well inside of buildings. “ In the least accessible areas they allow to optimize the number of sites needed to meet the need of traffic and therefore limit the costs of mobile network deployments ” according to Arcep.

Bouygues, Free, SFR and Orange are also subject to all the obligations of deployment and coverage of these frequencies they just bought. They must deploy widely in rural areas, to improve the quality 4G services and in anticipation of the deployment of 5G on these frequencies. And that’s not all: other obligations relate to improving access to mobile data in the TER trains, RER and Transilien became very political topic in recent months. ARCEP set specific coverage goals but progressive, the band 700 being allocated between and April 5 2016 June 30, 2009.

F.Sc