Insight

Before the Next Leap – Europe’s unfinished 5G story and the road to 6G

History rarely remembers the meetings where technological revolutions are designed. Few people outside the telecom industry paid attention when engineers, regulators and policymakers gathered in the late 1980s to develop the first standards. Yet the decisions taken in those conference rooms would ultimately shape how billions of people communicate today.

This month, a similar process has taken place in Madrid. As delegates gathered for the latest Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP, the global standards body responsible for mobile communications) plenary meetings, where the discussions helped shape the foundations of 6G.

They have addressed many of the technologies that will define connectivity in the 2030s: AI-Native Radio Access Networks (AI-RAN), Integrated Sensing and Communications (ISAC), Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN) and new approaches to spectrum management. Once again, the message is clear: 6G is coming.

Yet before discussing what 6G will deliver, another question deserves attention: what will ensure a smooth transition towards it?

Technological revolutions don’t happen overnight. The transition from analogue to digital television required years of coexistence between old and new systems while households upgraded equipment and broadcasters modernised infrastructure.

Telecommunications face a similar challenge today.

Every generation of mobile technology relies on a period of coexistence between the network of yesterday and the network of tomorrow. These mechanisms often receive far less attention than the technologies they support, yet they can significantly influence both network evolution and the way policymakers assess progress. The transition from 4G to 5G provides a useful example.

From 4G to 5G – Dynamic Spectrum Sharing: a useful solution that came with trade-offs

The most recent example of a transition mechanism was Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS).

Its objective was simple: accelerate the rollout of 5G by allowing operators to use the same spectrum resources simultaneously for 4G and 5G. Instead of waiting for complete spectrum refarming, operators could dynamically allocate resources between 4G and 5G users according to demand. The benefits were substantial: faster deployment, lower costs and significantly broader 5G coverage.

However, like any transition mechanism DSS involved trade-offs.

Because LTE was never designed to coexist with future generations. When 5G came, additional signalling and coordination were required. This generated overhead, meaning that part of the network’s capacity had to be devoted to managing coexistence rather than carrying user traffic.

Importantly, this does not mean DSS-based deployments were not genuine 5G networks. They were labelled as “5G”, but this encompasses very different technical realities, ranging from fully standalone deployments to architectures still heavily dependent on LTE.

The political lesson of DSS

The lessons we should learn from DSS should also be political.

During the first phase of 5G deployment, coverage became the dominant indicator of success. Countries reported increasing availability, operators announced deployment milestones and Europe celebrated progress towards Digital Decade objectives.

The problem is that those figures answered only one question: Can a user receive a 5G signal?

The European Commission itself increasingly acknowledges this distinction. The Digital Decade reports explain that the current KPI largely reflects what can be considered “basic 5G” coverage rather than the full range of advanced 5G capabilities.

The numbers illustrate this gap: EU household 5G coverage reached 96.8%, while rural coverage reached 88.9%. Yet coverage in the strategic 3.4-3.8 GHz band stood at 74.8% nationally and only 33.7% in rural areas, while only 20.9% of mobile sites supported 5G Standalone.

Europe is therefore close to achieving universal 5G coverage. It is, however, far from achieving universal access to advanced 5G capabilities.

The latest 5G Observatory report confirms that DSS generally delivered lower performance than dedicated 5G spectrum and is gradually being phased out as operators deploy more advanced architectures.

Why better indicators matter?

Connectivity KPIs help shaping investment decisions.

The Digital Decade reports have become one of Europe’s most influential reference points for governments, operators, investors and industrial stakeholders. They increasingly act as a compass for identifying connectivity gaps, determining where public funding is needed and understanding whether Europe is ready for the next wave of digital transformation.

That influence extends well beyond telecom.

Industries increasingly rely on connectivity indicators when making strategic decisions. If the data suggests that advanced connectivity objectives have already been achieved, investment priorities will naturally shift elsewhere.

Trustworthy KPIs are therefore not simply reporting tools. They are signals that influence where Europe directs capital, innovation and public policy.

As Europe moves towards 6G, the challenge is no longer measuring whether networks exist, but what those networks are capable of delivering.

This discussion also extends beyond the Digital Decade framework. The proposed Digital Networks Act (DNA) places increasing emphasis on “high-quality, reliable and resilient connectivity”, recognising that Europe’s competitiveness will depend on advanced digital infrastructure capable of supporting AI, cloud computing, industrial automation and future 6G services.

If Europe’s policy objectives are becoming more sophisticated, its measurement framework should evolve accordingly. Beyond coverage, greater attention should be given to indicators such as user experience, latency, reliability and overall network maturity. This is particularly relevant as Europe debates new approaches to spectrum management and sharing under the DNA.

In that sense, the debate is not only about how Europe transitions to 6G, but also about how Europe chooses to define connectivity success.

MRSS: the next transition mechanism

This brings us to Multi-Radio Access Technology Spectrum Sharing (MRSS), one of the migration tools currently being discussed within 3GPP.

Like DSS, MRSS would allow two generations of mobile technology to coexist within the same spectrum resources and currently serves as the agreed baseline approach being studied for the 5G-to-6G transition[1]. The similarity with DSS is obvious but the difference is that the technical context has changed.

Many of the limitations that complicated 4G/5G coexistence do not exist to the same degree between 5G and future 6G systems. Unlike its predecessor, 5G was designed with greater flexibility. Ericsson, Nokia and several 3GPP contributors increasingly describe MRSS not as a workaround but as the leading candidate for the 5G-to-6G migration framework. While implementation details remain under discussion, the concept is being considered from the outset as part of the 6G transition.

Why transition tools matter?

The importance of MRSS extends well beyond mobile operators.

Telecommunications generations typically evolve every ten years, but many connected assets remain operational for much longer. The automotive sector provides a particularly relevant example. Vehicles entering the market in the early 2030s are expected to stay on European roads well into the 2040s. Increasingly, they rely on connectivity for software updates, telematics, eCall services, predictive maintenance and future cooperative driving applications.

The same logic applies to railway systems, industrial machinery, energy infrastructure and public safety networks. These sectors cannot simply switch connectivity generations in a glimpse.

Transition mechanisms such as DSS and MRSS exist also because innovation cycles in telecom move faster than investment cycles in other sectors that depend on connectivity.

The logos Take

As basic coverage approaches saturation, Europe should progressively complement coverage statistics with indicators focused on capability, user-experience and network maturity. The 5G Observatory already tracks many of these metrics, such as mid-band coverage, standalone deployment and user availability, but they remain largely confined to a technical and additional report.

Future Digital Decade Reports should give these indicators greater prominence so that Europe’s connectivity success is assessed not only by where networks exist, but by what they can deliver.

The lesson of DSS is not that spectrum sharing should be avoided. Rather, it shows that migration technologies and end-state technologies should not always be measured in the same way.

Several operators at the Madrid 3GPP plenary highlighted that the migration path itself may ultimately determine the economic viability of 6G. In that sense, the debate should focus on how Europe measures, funds and incentivises their deployment.

And that may be the most important lesson for 6G. The right question is whether citizens, businesses and public services have begun experiencing the capabilities that make that generation meaningful.

The discussions that took place at the 3GPP plenary in Madrid will not, by themselves, determine how Europe measures connectivity success. They will, however, help shape the technical foundations of the 5G-to-6G transition.

The challenge for policymakers is to ensure that regulatory frameworks and reporting mechanisms evolve in parallel. As Europe prepares future editions of the Digital Decade Report and reviews its post-2030 connectivity objectives, the time has come to place capability-based indicators at the heart of the policy debate. Waiting until 6G deployment is already underway risks measuring tomorrow’s networks with yesterday’s metrics.

Bibliography

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