Draft legislation on spectrum reform will modernise and simplify Australia’s spectrum management framework, as the nation prepares for 5G networking, Comms Minister Mitch Fifield said yesterday.

Fified was addressing a Communications Day conference in Sydney. He said arrival of 5G would present an “unprecedented opportunity” for the entire Australian ecoomy.

“There’s no country I think better positioned to harness the opportunities of 5G. We have an effective and competitive mobile market which delivers voice and data coverage to 99.3 per cent of the population and this despite our huge landmass and extremely low population density,” Fifield said, ignoring recent NBN complaints

He predicted that 5G will enable new services in fields such as health, education, automotive, adding that there is also “enormous scope” for emergency services systems to take advantage of it.

Fifield claimed the Government is working to modernise a policy and legislative framework which will support the early uptake of 5G, including ensuring that there are no unnecessary roadblocks for carriers seeking to deploy the technology – nor, presumably 4G left-outs …