Germany unveils its cunning plan for 5G

The German ministry for transport and digital infrastructure has published the national strategy for 5G, with the stated aim of becoming a market leader.

The strategy was unveiled by Federal Minister Alexander Dobrindt who, to his credit, seems more focused on nailing the technology by 2025 rather than trying to claim dubious firsts of little relevance to 99% of the population.

“5G is the foundation of the gigabit society,” said Dobrindt, according to a combination of Google and Microsoft’s translation skills. “With the super-fast mobile communications standard we give the starting shot for the digital real-time age. For this, we are the first country to present a comprehensive 5G strategy. We want Germany to provide a high-performance 5G network by 2025. With this strategy, we put 5G in the region. We are pushing the grid rollout, providing frequencies and testing 5G in cities and municipalities. We put Germany at the forefront and create the foundation for digital value creation.

The announcement listed the whole 2-3.5 GHz range to be allocated for 5G, a process expected to be complete in 2018. There was also talk of upgrading the fibre backbone of the country and of investing in a bunch of smart city technologies expected to capitalise on all this 5G goodness. Germany might not have the most state-of-the-art mobile network now, but it wants to have one by 2025. You can read further analysis from Light Reading here and if your German is up to it you can view the full report here.