Free Mobile deployed more 3.5GHz sites than its rivals in June, but it still has work to do to meet its targets. Orange is chasing its lone competitor.
Accelerate your commitments. In its new monthly monitoring of operators’ 5G deployments, the National Frequencies Agency reports a new performance from Free Mobile in the deployment of the 3.5 GHz band. Lagging behind its competitors since June 2022, the former troublemaker has started to accelerate its pace. After deploying more sites than its competitors, the company did so again in June.
Thus, the former troublemaker has more technically active sites than his competitors, i.e. 221 supports compared to 171 for Orange, 152 for SFR, and 124 for Bouygues Telecom.
In total, Free Mobile has 6,518 sites on the 3.5 GHz frequency. It will need to deploy another 1,482 sites by the end of the year to meet its commitments, i.e. deploy 8,000 sites on this frequency. This means activating an average of 247 sites per month.
For their part, Bouygues Telecom and SFR achieved this goal in May, with 8,127 and 8,374 sites respectively. With its 10,055 technical operational sites, Orange has already reached a new milestone. It is the first operator to reach 8,000 sites at 3.5 GHz in November 2023. The 2025 target of 10,500 sites is also within sight.
In the overall ranking, Free Mobile maintains its fundamental leadership with 19,632 5G sites. It is ahead of Bouygues Telecom and its 13,777 carriers, 13,589 of which are equipped with the 2100 MHz band, SFR (12,239 including 8,294 in 2100 MHz) and Orange (10,104). The operator exclusively deploys the 3.5 GHz band for greater productivity, and has only 128 sites in the 2100 MHz band.
As of July 1, 38,138 5G sites have been declared technically operational by mobile operators. They emit radio waves but may not be commercially open yet. Almost all of these 5G installations are licensed at existing sites, which are already using 2G, 3G or 4G technologies. Only 10 sites host 5G alone.
This article was reprinted on Univers FreeBox.
