Brussels hosted last 26 October the second meeting of the COCOM working group on Exchange of Best Practice for broadband internet access and the development of the 5G network (WG NBP/5G).
COCOM WG NBP/5G is chaired by the European Commission and was created to facilitate the sharing of best practices in order to support member states when revising and updating their national broadband plans (NBPs) and setting the path to follow for 5G implementation. That need stems from the gigabit connectivity objectives proposed by the European Commission1; implementation of the best practices to develop will remain voluntary. Note that this working group should not duplicate work already being carried out in other groups on these matters, such as the Radio Spectrum Policy Group (RSPG), the Radio Spectrum Committee (RSC) and the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC).
The topics COCOM WG NBP/5G will deal with are the following:
- approaches followed in the scope of the NBPs in each member state;
- measures to facilitate the implementation of small cells;
- opportunities for government communications with 5G;
- measures to boost investment in network infrastructures.
The working group should also develop and complete its work between September 2017 and January 2018, and specifically produce an informative report with the best practices, which is expected to be approved by COCOM in March 2018.
Several presentations concerning some of the aforementioned topics were given during this working session. A number of those issues were then discussed in greater detail.
1 Commission communication ''Towards a European Gigabit Society'' (documents COM(2016)587 and SWD(2016)300 available at Communication - Connectivity for a Competitive Digital Single Market - Towards a European Gigabit Society
