US technology company Qualcomm has scooped all 17 chunks of UK-L-Band spectrum, auctioned over the last week, for a total of £8,334,000 - so you can expect MediaFLO announcements from UK operators any day now. The auction and started out with nine bidders competing for various combinations of the single 12.5MHz chunk and 16 …

COMMENTS

House rules Send corrections

This topic is closed for new posts.

Friday 16th May 2008 15:07 GMT Anonymous Coward

EU

can shuve it up their arse and smoke it...

As much as I may not like the idea of Qualcomm walking off with the whole lot and doing what they like - I like quango dictated stalinist manifesto even less. (You will willingly do it our way or we'll force you - either way you'll do it our way in the end)

0 0
Friday 16th May 2008 15:30 GMT John Browne

Ofcom

"...and something to keep Qualcomm's lawyers busy for a decade or two"

I would have though that Qualcomm's lawyers would be busy enough sueing every mobile phone manufacturer in sight.

As for the EU mandating a single standard I'm sure everyone in Britain will be more than happy to have incompatible handsets with the rest of Europe. Didn't GSM work out very well for everyone?

Hopefully Ofcoms "technology Neutral" spectrum won't lead to the situation that occurred in the US where there were many different mobile phone technologies that were incompatible with each other which led to limited roaming capability for customers and terrible service coverage.

Ofcoms implementation is likely to be much worse as the chance for interference across the frequency bands from different types of wireless technologies is going to go through the roof.

0 0
Friday 16th May 2008 18:49 GMT Anonymous Coward

bugger

donations of £££/€€€ for tin-foil hats accepted here c/o the register

looks like were all gonna need them now...

get em whilst you can... they flying off the shelves

US stocks have already sold out.........

(9/10 homeless tramps can't be wrong)

0 0
Friday 16th May 2008 23:31 GMT Anonymous Coward

‘Qualcomm splurges on UK spectrum’

I've got a UK Spectrum in the loft... I think it's a 48k.

Good job it's got rubber keys if Qualcomm are gonna splurge on it...

Mine's the multicoloured coat... (well 7 colours normal, 7 colours bright)

0 0
Saturday 17th May 2008 17:53 GMT Anonymous Coward

DVB-* IS already the standard...

"EU

By Anonymous Coward

Posted Friday 16th May 2008 14:41 GMT can shuve it up their arse and smoke it...

As much as I may not like the idea of Qualcomm walking off with the whole lot and doing what they like - I like quango dictated stalinist manifesto even less. (You will willingly do it our way or we'll force you - either way you'll do it our way in the end)"

you obviously dont understand...., the DVB-* standard, IS THE THE UK STANDARD ALREADY , we use DVB-C for Virgin Media, DVB-S for SKY and DVB-T for Freeview.

soon, you will be seeing DVB-*2 upgrades in all these places both here and covering ALL the EU too.

were as this MediaFLO is an American Polished Turd thats not even ready for prime time in comparison...

yet another way to funnel all the UKs cash to the US corporations, we dont own our own UK based companys anymore, we are rent boys , lapdogs to our US masters just like tony was to george ....

0 0
Saturday 17th May 2008 17:53 GMT Anonymous Coward

Mobile TV

Why exactly would anyone bother to buy into a technology that is incompatible with the rest of the local market, and is likely to have problems with interference from the European usage?

The investment in mobile TV is of dubious value at the best of times - how many people actually want it? - now someone is suggesting a solution of even lower value.

They're also assuming suitable handsets would actually be available - when the majority of the market is using DVB-H, why would anyone bother to provide MediaFLO support? Nokia et al probably won't make too many models with DVB-H, do you really see them bothering with any European models that include MediaFLO?

And if DVB-H becomes the mandatory standard this won't exactly help the situation.

It's only a guess, but I suspect Qualcomm have wasted their money.

0 0
Saturday 17th May 2008 17:53 GMT amanfromMars

Scenario with Vista VRoom VRoom ...... for Space and Room to Grow

"EU ... can shuve it up their arse and smoke it...

As much as I may not like the idea of Qualcomm walking off with the whole lot and doing what they like - I like quango dictated stalinist manifesto even less. (You will willingly do it our way or we'll force you - either way you'll do it our way in the end)" ... By Anonymous Coward Posted Friday 16th May 2008 14:41 GMT

Present any BroadBandCaster/Phisherman with Superior Product/Content and they will make a Lot of Bread from what you Like, AC, and Gratitude will Pay All Handsomely ..... in AI Near Perfect, Virtualised Worlds Environment.

0 0
Monday 19th May 2008 10:28 GMT Tim Williams

Anti competitive

Surely Qualcomm buying all the spectrum is anti-competitive. Some body needs to talk to the monopolies commission about this and have the auction re-run with rules to ensure the spectrum is shared between at least 2 providers.

If you want spectrum to be technology neutral you should ensure a level playing field so that one company can't buy the entire spectrum and force it's technology on us to the exclusion of others.

0 0