Britain should prepare for a huge increase in mobile phone transmitters to deliver the next generation of services, the country’s infrastructure chief says.
Lord Adonis, head of the National Infrastructure Commission, said a 5G network of ultrafast connections would need sweeping changes to planning laws and a big reduction to the rents that providers pay to site transmitters.
Technology already exists to use high frequencies of radio spectrum to service the data requirements of the next wave of digital applications and innovations.
The new mobile phone network, 5G, will be unveiled in South Korea in 2018 to coincide with the Winter Olympic Games. It is unlikely to be launched in Britain until at least 2020.
Unlike 4G, which is mostly used for consumer data services,