Poland risks missing EU’s 5G target in 2020: Regulator

WARSAW: Poland risks missing the European Union’s target for rolling out 5G in 2020, the telecoms regulator said on Wednesday, a day after officials said the spectrum auction would have to be restarted from the beginning.

Poland and other countries are preparing to introduce 5G networks offering data speeds up to 50 to 100 times faster than current networks.

But Poland’s 5G spectrum auction, suspended this month due to the coronavirus, will have to be restarted to avoid the threat of legal challenges and due to planned changes to Poland’s telecoms law to beef up security, officials said on Tuesday.

The regulator said on Wednesday that doing that would erase the “possibility of achieving the objectives of the Digital Agenda for Europe (in terms of launching 5G) using the 3.6 GHz band in 2020”.