GSA FWA Forum Contribution
to EU Digital Infrastructure Consultation
Executive Summary
GSA 4G-5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) Forum represents a broad end-to-end 3GPP ecosystem with over 50 companies across infrastructure, software, chipset, module and customer premise equipment (CPE) industry segments. The GSA 4G- 5G FWA forum welcomes the opportunity to participate in EC’s consultation related to the publication of its “How to master Europe’s digital infrastructure needs?” white paper. We are pleased to see that 5G fixed wireless access is considered as an additional technology to close the digital divide in Europe as mentioned in the section “Pillar II: Completing the Digital Single Market” . Indeed, 5G FWA brings a fast, economic attractive and future proof alternative to deploy broadband services, especially for rural and less densely populated areas where there is a connectivity gap and fiber deployment costs are high. Moreover, 5G FWA deployments bring more choice for consumers, creating a competitive and affordable broadband market.
In its Gigabit Society Communication the Commission set a connectivity target of 100 Mbps download speeds, upgradable to 1 Gbps, for all European households. This 2025 target has been reconfirmed in the Commission’s recent Digital Compass Communication. Yet, millions of European households lack access to fast and reliable broadband. Bridging this connectivity gap will require a range of different technologies including 5G FWA, particularly in harder to reach rural areas. Moreover, 5G FWA can play a key role to accelerate copper switch-off to achieve the Digital Decade target for Gigabit connectivity. In addition of slow broadband speeds, copper-based broadband networks have high energy consumption. As an example, Telenor Norway has been one of first incumbent operators in Europe to migrate its copper customer base as it was unable to meet the need for speed, stability and capacity for broadband services. Telenor addressed the challenge to decommissioning 18% of broadband connections by 2022 with a mix of fibre and Fixed Wireless Access (FWA). Between 2020 and 2022, Telenor added 51,000 FWA and 60,000 fibre broadband connections. 2023 marked the first year in over a century without any Telenor Norway subscribers on the legacy copper network. By December 2023, the decommissioning activities by Telenor Norway had already secured electricity savings of 22GWh and emissions of 8 500 tonnes of CO2 annually were avoided.
In addition of providing fixed broadband, investments in ultrafast mobile networks for 5G FWA also benefit other use cases such as mobile broadband, IoT for smart agriculture, industry 4.0, which are key pillars of EU Digitalization agenda.
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GSA FWA Forum Contribution
As of End of June 2024, there were 55 GSA 4G-5G FWA Forum members covering the majority of the infrastructure, chipset, module and CPE value chain for FWA. One of the main deliverables has been a 4G-5G FWA Ecosystem Catalogue, which is now in its 11th iteration and promotes a wide range of FWA devices, chipsets and modules. The Forum delivers an annual CPE Survey report to help the industry better estimate the real market size of the 4G-5G FWA market.
