Singapore’s industry regulator, the Info-communications Media Development Authority (IMDA), has taken a decision to waive frequency fees for 5G suitable spectrum until December 2019 with immediate effect, to encourage industry trials in the city-state. Minister for Communications and Information Yaacob Ibrahim confirmed that the decision aims ‘to lower the regulatory barrier and encourage industry trials in 5G technology,’ and stimulate innovation in new generation mobile, emerging technologies and Internet of things (IoT) connectivity such as that for controlling driverless cars.
Dr Yaacob noted that the 5G trials already carried out by Singapore’s mobile network operators (MNOs) have shown ‘promising capabilities’ and the IMDA has identified suitable spectrum bands to support the technology. Further, the regulator is mulling the possibility of introducing regulations to support the introduction of carrier aggregation technologies to improve MNOs’ ability to bolster mobile data speeds and network capacity.