The 5G network is necessary to “secure Singapore’s competitive edge,” S. Iswaran, communications minister, said in the statement.
The spectrum allocations will allow Singaporean carriers to offer 5G services by 2020, while some other countries in the region including China and South Korea are already offering some commercial 5G connectivity. Standalone networks are seen as crucial for developing and deploying applications from autonomous driving to remote surgery and factory automation.
Costs to build such networks may erode profit at carriers including Singapore Telecommunications and StarHub, which had asked the government to make bandwidth available cheaply or free.
The spectrum licenses to be awarded next year would run for as long as 16 years, according to the regulator’s presentation Thursday.
Singapore is already facilitating trials for its use it in drones, autonomous vessels, remote operations of ports and manufacturing sector, to support the use of the 5G technology.
