Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment his Department has made of the potential effect of 5G on data used in meteorology; and what steps he will take to ensure that 5G does not interfere with weather forecasting.

The Government is committed to creating a policy and regulatory environment which will ensure the right conditions for the development and support the deployment of 5G networks. Within this, DCMS is working closely with Ofcom and BEIS agencies to ensure 5G developments take into account Earth Observation services.

Identification of spectrum bands at global level to support 5G services worldwide will be on the agenda at the upcoming World Radio Conference 2019 (WRC-19). The UK has been actively involved in the work of the international groups ITU (International Telecommunication Union) and CEPT (European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations) to study the necessary emission limits for 5G to ensure that they meet internationally agreed protection criteria for these satellites.

The current UK 5G deployments use frequencies (3400-3800 MHz) that are not contiguous with or near, in terms of spectrum bands, to those used by weather forecasting and, therefore, would not cause interference.

Government will continue to engage with Ofcom to ensure that any future plans for use of spectrum bands for mobile networks will take into consideration the protection of the weather forecasting bands.