Peru proposes offering 5G spectrum in exchange for coverage

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Peru’s recently published Legislative Decree 1627, related to 5G deployment, comes with an attractive offer: 5G spectrum, at no apparent cost, in exchange for coverage.

The decree reportedly establishes measures to promote the deployment of public telecommunications services through 5G (or higher) technology. Importantly, however, the new rule empowers the country’s Ministry of Transport and Communications (MTC) to assign radio spectrum directly to interested companies, after calling for expressions of interest, provided that the demand of these companies does not exceed the spectrum available in a given frequency band.

In return for the allocation of the spectrum, however, companies will have to fulfil mandatory investment commitments aimed at closing gaps in public telecommunications services in rural areas or places of ‘preferential social interest’. In other words, they have to provide 5G coverage. There may also be infrastructure obligations relating to the Pan American Games due in Peru in 2027.

At the moment there is 5G rollout going on but it’s non-standalone (NSA) through existing 4G LTE networks. This means that, right now, operators are able to use their frequencies from previous generations to provide an NSA 5G service. However, those licenses don’t expire for a while, so there is a worry that operators don’t have the incentives to invest in standalone (SA) 5G.

The government wants to allocate enough spectrum to achieve the optimal level of 5G service that only SA can enable. In other words, according to the minister of transport and communications Raúl Pérez-Reyes, the hope is to enable applications such as the Internet of Things, telemedicine, tele-education, automation and remote management.

There’s certainly a long way to go. The DPL News website says that, as of the fourth quarter of 2023, only 30 out of 1,891 districts in the country have partial 5G coverage; that’s 1.5% of districts nationally.

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