**This episode of 'The Sound of Economics' features Bruegel senior fellow J. Scott Marcus in conversation with Lise Fuhr, director general, European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association (ETNO).**

The next wave of mobile network innovation is provoking great excitement in the industry. And indeed, there is substantial potential for improvement. However, the exact form of the technology and the appropriate policy support are still far from clear. 

The next generation of mobile technology, 5G, is being developed along markedly different lines from previous generations. In the past, mobile generations were generally characterised by a core technology (or sometimes by two or more core technologies), and were designed to fulfil the requirements of a fairly small number of mobile voice and data applications. By contrast, 5G is being developed to fulfil the needs of multiple use cases.

In this episode Scott Marcus and Lise Fuhr outline the challenges of 5G deployment in Europe, their policy implications, and the impact for the citizens. 

For further reading we recommend the blog post by Scott Marcus [High expectations for 5G confront practical realities](http://bruegel.org/2017/03/high-expectations-for-5g-confront-practical-realities/).

This podcast was recorded during the event [Rethinking Industrial Policy in the Digital Age](http://bruegel.org/events/rethinking-industrial-policy-in-the-digital-age-challenges-for-europe/), an all-day conference held on 21 March 2019, about how the European policy-making will have to adapt to the digital transformation.