Governments need to worry more about freeing up spectrum for 5G development and less about making money from spectrum auctions, says Borje Ekholm, chief executive of Ericsson, the Swedish telecom infrastructure firm.
"The lifeblood of the industry is the spectrum, and it has to be made available," he said. "Countries around the world should think about their telecom infrastructure as providing other economic benefits than licence prices and should factor in the value of having a better telecom network."
Mr Ekholm said governments should find ways to make the spectrum more widely available, especially the 3.5-gigahertz mid-band that he calls ideal for 5G because of its mix of coverage and capacity.
5G will have 10 times faster speeds, 10 times lower latency and the ability to accommodate a massive increase in connected devices, he said.
As a "free enterprise man", he thinks governments should also take a hands-off approach and limit regulation to allow the infrastructure to be built more quickly, especially when it comes to site access and permitting the private sector to build new towers and other network infrastructure.
"I think the 5G infrastructure will drive national competitiveness in the future," Mr Ekholm said. "Where are you going to put your manufacturing or R&D facility in the future? You're going to do it in the country with 5G infrastructure."
He said the government could also make it less financially burdensome for telecoms to buy spectrum to use for 5G by offering build-out conditions instead of costly upfront licensing fees.
"For a period of time, governments have viewed a successful auction as one where it has the highest price," Mr Ekholm said. "It may be better to think about it in terms of the macroeconomic benefits for the country for building out digital infrastructure. It is not a coincidence that the biggest web players are either Chinese or North American, because that's where 4G was available first."
Thailand has the second-highest spectrum costs in the world, behind the US. But the government recently gave the three major telecoms a five-year break from past auction payments in exchange for promising to buy 700-megahertz licences, which are expected to be used for 5G.
The ideal spectrum is 3.5GHz, which is tied up in satellite communications throughout much of Southeast Asia. Many of these satellites are far from retirement.
"For 4G, the 700MHz is a great spectrum, but it is not going to be ideal for early 5G as it will take a while until the device ecosystem is built out," Mr Ekholm said. "However, I believe all bands will be 5G in the future, so it is not a matter of which spectrum is wise or unwise to use for 5G."
Mr Ekholm feels that 5G will be one of the most critical infrastructure projects in the future, on a par with highways, ports and railroads. Because of high speeds and low latency, it could even replace fibre broadband in many homes and make WiFi unnecessary. But the government must make as much spectrum available as possible and make difficult choices to retire older communications technologies from the spectrum.
"There are communications satellites that have recently been put in orbit with a lifetime of years," he said. "In the past it was very rational to use that spectrum for satellites, but now it's better to use ranges for mobile networks."
Despite widespread concern over the cost of developing 5G infrastructure, Mr Ekholm said much of it can be built on top of the existing 4G network and gradually expanded.
He said Ericsson's 4G towers are already 5G-compatible and are just waiting for spectrum availability to switch over. While 5G does require a greater number of smaller towers to accommodate the large increases in connected devices, some of the network can be built out using "street macros" or small metre-long boxes that can be installed on traffic lights around a city where there is no space for towers.
The 5G network will be built in stages, first for the mobile network, then eventually for businesses like factories and offices that use a large number of Internet of Things devices.
The factory of the future will replace individual "smart" robots with a network of "dumb" robots that are all connected to a central processor. Instead of each robot having an expensive processor, the robots can get instructions over the 5G network, making individual robots much cheaper.
"I believe 5G will be the fastest-scaling mobile technology," Mr Ekholm said. "It will provide so much value to so many applications that we do not even foresee today."