First report of the task force on mobile communications expansion in North Rhine-Westphalia

With the “Mobile Network Expansion and 5G” task force founded in 2002, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia is aiming for a cooperative and market-driven approach to improving mobile network coverage with LTE and 5G in areas that are not yet adequately supplied with mobile services. The “Report of the Task Force ‘Mobile Network Expansion and 5G for 2021‘” published by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Innovation, Digitalization and Energy of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia in April 2022 provides an initial assessment of the goals achieved to date, as well as the challenges that have arisen in the course of implementation. According to the report, North Rhine-Westphalia is far ahead in terms of LTE mobile coverage among the federal states with 97.6% of the state’s area and 5G coverage is also leading with more than 70% of the area. Nevertheless, in some regions, a difficult search for locations or a lack of acceptance for new mobile communications sites among the population only led to a delayed expansion with additional mobile communications stations. For this reason, the task force report that has now been published once again places particular emphasis on the implementation of the 20-point plan formulated in 2020, especially with regard to the obstacles.