What results for the first anniversary of 5G? – Digital

It’s hardly a surprise, but 5G isn’t a bestseller yet. At the time of blowing out its first candle, the new generation network is for the moment only the shy student at the back of the class who is struggling to seduce his world. Nothing maddening in this observation. If it is unanimous today, 4G took some time before becoming essential. But where the latter landed with in its luggage video streams never seen at the time, just as 3G promised the Internet at all times, 5G does not seem to offer any real novelty to the user. lambda. Even in companies, particularly concerned by its future advances, it is still struggling to convince (see box).

5G mainly concerns large cities

In terms of infrastructure deployment, 5G has found its cruising speed. After the first branches installed in Nice by SFR a year ago, everything went very quickly. At the last census of the National Frequency Agency (ANFR), dating from November 1, more than 30,000 5G sites were authorized, of which just under 20,000 are operational – against 50,000 in 4G. The majority (18,586 authorized, 12,610 operational) of these antennas are initiated by Free Mobile and are based on the 700 MHz band. The rest is shared between Orange, Bouygues Telecom, SFR, Free and Outremer Telecom on the 2100 MHz and 3.5 GHz bands, the famous “core band” of 5G.

For the moment, it is mainly the big cities that have a real 5G connection. According to the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Communications, Posts and Press Distribution (Arcep), the “catch rate”, that is to say the proportion of throughput tests carried out which used only 5G , reaches 36 to 60% in dense areas, depending on the operators. But in intermediate and rural areas, this percentage drops drastically. In the most remote regions, only Free manages to maintain the 5G connection 27% of the time, when its competitors cannot.

The Iliad operator is thus reaping the benefits of a widely criticized strategy. By choosing to convert hundreds of 700 MHz 4G sites into 5G antennas, it has ensured very wide coverage of the territory (it claims 70% coverage), as evidenced by its results in rural areas. But it is also the operator offering the lowest average speeds, by far. When Orange manages to post peaks at 227 Mbit / s in dense areas, Free painfully exceeds the 30 Mbit / s overall average, hampered by its strategy favoring the 700 MHz frequency over the core band or even the intermediate bands – l The operator has since contested Arcep’s test protocol.

Packages and smartphones are on the rise

Regarding the adoption of 5G, the beginnings are again timid, but encouraging. “One in four packages sold by SFR is now in 5G, even though we only cover 40% of the population”, thus welcomed the CEO of the red square brand in The echoes. Like her, the other operators have since launched their compatible offers, at prices obviously higher than in 4G. Only Sosh is not out of the woods yet, but it cannot be too late.

Counting the end of the year, CSC Insight figures 5G smartphone sales at 560 million according to our colleagues from ZDNet. Figures boosted by the arrival of the first compatible iPhone at the end of 2020. By 2022, IDC even forecasts that sales of 5G terminals will represent 50% of the market. We have not finished hearing about this new generation, even if we do not yet see very well what it will bring us.