With mobile data usage increasing by up to 25% each year, Europe faces the challenge of meeting their citizens’ future demand of mobile services. Towards the end of the decade, mobile network performance in European countries could decline without additional spectrum allocation.
The CEOs of eleven leading European telecommunication companies, including Telefonica, are asking the European Commission and National Administrations to make the upper 6 GHz band (6.425 – 7.125 MHz) available for mobile networks without undue restrictions. The upper 6 GHz band is the only spectrum band that can address the growing traffic demand in an economical and sustainable way, and it will be critical for the evolution of 5G and future 6G.
Spectrum needs for mobile networks and Wi-Fi
Telefónica, and the co-signing telecommunications operators, are providing both mobile and fixed services, including Wi-Fi at homes, workplaces and public spaces, as well as IP TV and digital services across a wide range of European and Latin American countries.
Against this background, our assessment is clear: Wi-Fi can cope with the increasing traffic demand using the additional spectrum made available in the lower 6 GHz band that doubled in 2021 the previously available spectrum for Wi-Fi. This spectrum is currently lightly used, and it is sufficient to satisfy future needs of European citizens and enterprises, ensuring gigabit speeds over Wi-Fi.
Recent tests conducted by Comtel show that, with existing Wi-Fi spectrum, 5 GHz and lower 6 GHz bands, 1 Gbps is achieved in all cases simulated. The test in an isolated apartment (no interference), resulted in speeds of 1.5 Gbps using only one access point or 6.3Gbps using four access points. A simulated urban apartment achieved 1.7 Gbps using 2 APs and 4.5 Gbps using 4 APs. This shows that the limiting factor is, in many homes, Wi-Fi coverage rather than capacity. The solution to that problem is installing more access points, rather than increasing the amount of spectrum per access point.
The global mobile traffic increase in 2023 was greater than the total mobile traffic in 2018. Looking forward, with Europe’s mobile traffic growing at 20-25% per annum, the forecasts are that traffic will continue to grow at double digit rates across Europe. GSMA forecasts that mobile traffic in Europe will be 71 GB per user per month, up from 17 GB in 2023, a 22% CAGR.
These forecasts do not account for additional emerging use cases which could drive mobile traffic demand much further. Densifying the mobile networks could be proposed as an alternative for capacity increase, but where there is a high traffic demand the networks are already very dense making it difficult to densify even further due to interference, practical (lack of appropriate sites) or economic reasons.
It is critical for Europe to ensure future high-performance of mobile networks capable of providing the digital services that European citizens demand, making the complete 700 MHz in the upper 6 GHz band available for mobile networks without undue restrictions. The upper 6 GHz band is the only available band that can address the growing traffic demand in an economical and sustainable way.
Mr. Letta’s report, “Much more than a market”, acknowledges this, stating: “Europe’s strategic interest lies in safeguarding its leadership in 5G and 6G development and standardisation […]. Allocating [the upper 6GHz band] for IMT use is crucial for facilitating the high-performance and quality development of 5G services, which, in turn, will lay the groundwork for 6G technologies”.
Impact of shared use of the upper 6 GHz between mobile networks and Wi-Fi
Several studies have been done in the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunication Administrations (CEPT) to assess the feasibility and the impact on the efficient spectrum use of sharing scenarios between Wi-Fi and mobile networks in the upper 6 GHz band. These include scenarios with full power and reduced power mobile networks, and with or without additional sharing mechanism.
The tests show that using full power mobile base stations provides good outdoor and indoor coverage and capacity for mobile networks. At the same time, Wi-Fi usage indoors with existing Wi-Fi detection thresholds will result in significant interference between mobile and Wi-Fi.
The conclusion is that sharing the same spectrum between Wi-Fi and full power mobile networks in the same geographical areas is not possible. Additional sharing mechanisms that imply changes on the standards and equipment manufacturing would improve lightly the detection success, but it would be costly and take time to be implemented.
Reduced power mobile base stations would reduce the signal level both outdoors and indoors, possibly increasing the percentage of indoor places where Wi-Fi could be used sharing the spectrum, but there will be still significant interference in both systems. On the other hand, reducing the power of mobile base stations largely impacts the performance and capacity of the mobile network, as shown in the table below:
Impact of reduced MFCN BS EIRP on cell throughput
| Baseline BS EIRP (dBm/100MHz) | Reduced BS EIRP (dBm/100MHz) | Reduction in cell median throughput (%) | Reduction in cell-edge throughput (%) |
| 83 | 77 | 15% | 72% |
| 83 | 71 | 37% | 100% |
| 83 | 65 | 57% | 100% |
| 83 | 59 | 76% | 100% |
Note that the cell median throughput represents the throughput experienced by the median user, and is a proxy for the cell capacity, including both indoor and outdoor use. Cell-edge throughput is the throughput experienced at the border of the cell. A 100% reduction means that users at the cell-edge experience a complete loss of connectivity, resulting in zero throughput.
Overall, the studies performed show that sharing the spectrum band between Wi-Fi and mobile networks at the same time and geographic area implies large impacts in the performance and capacity of both networks and results in a highly inefficient usage of the spectrum.
Our assessment as providers of both fixed and mobile broadband is, in summary, that mobile networks face a capacity problem and network quality will be negatively impacted in the future without an allocation of the upper 6 GHz band, while the challenge for Wi-Fi is improving coverage rather than expanding capacity, and allocating more frequencies will not address the root of the problem. Sharing the same frequency at the same geographic area and time would provide flexibility but is not realistic and the value of that flexibility would in our view be very limited. At this stage, therefore, the optimal decision can be no other but to allocate the full band to mobile.
