Speech of Prime Minister Juha Sipilä at the Latin American Spectrum conference México City 13.10.2016

Distinguished members of the Latin American Spectrum Management community, Ladies and gentlemen, it is an honour to be here with you today.

In fact, being here, I really feel I've returned to my roots. My background before joining politics was in telecommunications. I've worked in several Finnish telecommunications companies both as an entrepreneur and a board member, and I was very much involved when Finland pioneered many of the path-breaking technologies in the field of telecommunications from the late 1980s to the 2000s. So if you need a radio frequency filter designer, I’m at your disposal.

But I haven’t come far from technology and digital issues in my current job, either. These themes are closely interlinked with successful government policies as well. Digitalization is one of the cross-cutting key themes of my Government’s programme.

In Finland, we are aiming to reform our society and create new markets by building new digital platforms for our social and health care, transport system and schools – to name a few examples. In all of this, we keep the concept of mobility in our minds. And in all of this, the Government shows that it can take the lead in bringing the country to a new stage of digital evolution.

This requires out-of-the-box thinking – and it requires far-reaching changes in legislation. But as business professionals, you know that things get done only if you get them done.

But to return now to today’s topic. Let me first take you back to the turn of the millennium. In the year 2000, only 16 years ago, many hotels boasted that they had LAN cables available for their guests. Around that time, WiFi was an optional feature in computers, and a large portion of the world’s phone calls took place through copper landlines. 

Since then, spectrum usage has displaced LAN cables, and most new computers no longer have LAN ports. In terms of volume, WiFi has become the world’s most widely used connectivity standard, and as for phone calls, most of them are now done through mobile phones.

Beyond the expectations of the even most optimistic analysts of the year 2000, we have clear signs that wireless broadband connectivity will eventually connect more objects than human beings. 

And this fact brings us back to this room, and to the topic of this conference. The wireless revolution that we have witnessed in the last two decades was possible thanks to spectrum. And the wireless revolution that we are about to witness through the Internet of Things will also be possible thanks to spectrum.

Spectrum is limited and it needs to be managed with a careful balance between optimism, creativity, and humility. 

It would be a mistake to think that spectrum management is a local or regional question. And I would like to make a strong case for the enormous value of Latin America in the global spectrum management arena. It is widely known that during the World Radio Conference in Geneva in 2012, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Chile and Argentina, in intense dialogue with Africa and Europe, worked together in order to reach global consensus that paved the way for a harmonized use of the 700 MHz band in most countries around the world. 

Seven months later, walking the talk, in September 2012, beginning with Mexico, then Costa Rica, Colombia and Chile, the adoption of the APT700 standard generated a snowball effect that sent rip waves throughout the world. 

Today, thanks to the bold steps of Latin America, APT700 smartphones can be used in Africa, Europe, Latin America, and Asia. 

Distinguished participants, spectrum managers of Latin America – looking at the work you have done in recent years, it is fair to say that today, the world acknowledges how influential and important your work as spectrum managers can be. And that spectrum management in Latin America matters, and that it matters to the global community as well.

As a former telecommunications professional and as Prime Minister, I can say one thing: spectrum managers have great responsibilities. The way you define how spectrum is used, in what bands, and at what particular moment it is made available, is pivotal to the overall functioning of modern nations. 

Then again, nations are made of individuals and industries with multiple needs that are diverse and sometimes conflicting. 

In this sense, it is worth analysing two contrasting spectrum management paradigms: licensed versus unlicensed spectrum.

Licensing spectrum with exclusive rights has been one of the most powerful generators of industrial growth in the history of mankind. The great cash flows of mobile telephony between 2000 and 2010, together with handset subsidies, had a positive collateral effect in the computer industry, influencing microelectronics, accelerating the development of memory, screen technologies, and energy efficiency. 

Global productivity has largely benefited from the recent advancements in portable computers, but we should not forget that the ultra-thin laptops and tablets with bright and sharp screens we use today owe much to the industrial consequences of spectrum management.

Unlicensed spectrum has been very important in the development of connectivity as we know it today. The outstanding success of WiFi was a quiet surprise. LAN cables gradually and silently disappeared, and the possibility of seamlessly sharing a connectivity hotspot induced profound changes in the way we use Internet.

Thanks to WiFi,  the Internet suddenly became available in every corner of each house. The high cost of installing LAN cables in various parts of houses and buildings, and the difficulty of sharing cable connections, had been a real barrier to collective indoor internet usage. 

For these reasons, WiFi ignited the use of bandwidth intensive nomadic applications, and these applications themselves greatly modified our expectations about mobile connectivity. 

All of a sudden, we could go out and wish to have the same connectivity quality that we had at home. This has been a tremendous accelerator of LTE technologies, and it should be noted, for the purpose of this conference, that unlicensed spectrum for nomadic WiFi has exerted great pressure on licensed spectrum for mobile LTE. 

In Finland, we have seen first-hand how this has influenced our market. Today, the standard package for mobile connectivity is a flat fee for unlimited volume of LTE connectivity for 24 euro. Finns use nearly ten times as much data connectivity as the European average, and the average number of SIM cards including smartphones and tablets is two SIM cards per individual. 

We believe that spectrum management ignites innovation. In Finland, frequencies can be allocated for product development and testing purposes. The first 5G test license was granted last October, to Nokia. I understand that other major equipment manufacturers are also interested in the Finnish test frequencies, and we gladly invite all interested parties to apply for frequency test licences from the Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority.

An active and forward-looking spectrum policy is essential for the introduction of 5G. A significant number of frequencies will need to be allocated for use by 5G technology. Even today, more frequencies are needed for mobile broadband, as communications on the networks is increasing constantly. 

The long-held stance of Finnish communications policy has been to allocate as many frequencies as possible for wireless broadband use. Mobile broadband’s high penetration, high quality and affordable prices are also, to a great extent, the result of our successful national spectrum policy. In Finland, 4G networks already reach more than 95% of the population. 

It is intended that the new frequencies for 5G would be sought particularly from higher frequency bands than those currently used, to enable high transmission rates. It is also essential that we continue to allocate a sufficient number of lower frequency bands for mobile use, as this would help ensure the extensive coverage needed as a foundation for the new 5G technology. 

Finland is determined to influence actions at the international and the EU level, in order to ensure that a sufficient quantity of appropriate frequencies is found and allocated for 5G. Decisions about the new 5G frequencies will be made at the 2019 World Radiocommunication Conference, and Finland will be very active in the preparatory work for this.

Although 5G is a mobile technology, its introduction also requires an extensive optical fibre network. This is because the continuing development of mobile communications will mean substantial growth in the amount of data travelling via base stations. The aim in Finland’s communications policy is to promote the balanced construction of both wireless and fixed connections. 

In Finland, the work to develop 5G technology has not been left to engineers alone. It is deeply embedded in our Government Programme as well. We think that public decision-making has a crucial part to play in enabling and creating a favourable operating environment for digital services, and also for IoT applications and new business models. 

The objective of the IoT programme being set up in Finland is twofold: firstly, we want to see interaction between the private and public sectors in all business fields. Such interaction will allow the opportunities of digitalisation to be utilised by accelerating cloud-based digital service provision. Secondly, we want to see more technology companies invest in Finland, and more technology companies that are based in Finland. 

The Internet of Things will be a major user of 5G in the future, as IoT applications will require high capacity and reliable, delay-free connections. In the future, all devices will be in continuous M2M communication with each other. Such services will require more secure mobile networks that have higher capacity and greater coverage than today. 

We have seen interesting innovation at this side of the world, such as the incentive auctions launched in the United States to repurpose broadcasting spectrum. We will analyze them and try to learn from their end-to-end process. Also in the United States, the creation of FirstNet, the world's first dedicated public safety network, is a great subject of study among European spectrum managers. 

And talking about policy innovation, the case of Mexico has been quite remarkable. I have to say that the world was very impressed when Mexico modified its Constitution to elevate access to connectivity to the status of a fundamental human right. The world found it very interesting when we learned that Mexico had proposed the creation of a spectrum-rich wholesale LTE network. We think that under the configuration of Mexico, this will ignite tremendous creativity in the mobile-cloud domain, and that this can make Mexico the most advanced mobile market in the world. 

Also, we are very eager to see the positive impact that a wholesale network will have on the Internet of Things. It may well be that the capacity of this network renders itself to business models that we have yet to imagine. We applaud the braveness of Mexico in embracing such an innovative approach.

We feel that Mexico is the most exciting market in the world for ICT and IoT in the near future. On this visit to Mexico, I am accompanied by a group of distinguished Finnish innovation leaders who can elevate this country to full digitalization.

The world will certainly learn from the telecommunications revolution in Mexico, and Finnish business stands ready to be part of it.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak to you. I wish you an inspiring and fruitful conference, and fulfilling moments of taking the world of telecommunications towards a very bright future.