Roses are red, Three's feeling blue, spectrum appeal rejected, they'll have to make do Ofcom's 5G spectrum auction is to go ahead in April after mobile operator Three lost its final legal challenge to force the UK regulator to change the bidding rules. The comms watchdog had planned to hold the auction for the 2.3 and 3.4GHz bands in autumn 2017, but it was delayed by litigation brought by Three UK and BT/EE – …
I have to be honest, I'm really here just to congratulate the subbies for the headline. They're obviously having fun this morning. High on chocolates and love perhaps...
As for the story, well it's no surprise. Since Offcom let EE get away with murder over the 4G spectrum a while ago. The shennanigans - where they had to sell spectrum due to the massive amount they had, but were allowed to launch a monopoly 4G service first and didn't hand their spectrum over to 3 for about 9 months. The equitable solution there was clearly not to license them for the 4G roll-out until they'd sold up - and thus incetivise them to do the right thing. Easy, cheap and fair. But apparently Offcom know best.
It's such a shame that the Lib Dem stopped Cameron from killing them in the coalition. I'm not sure if their replacement would have been any better of course. But one can hope.
The spectrum is divided into small frequency bands, and the operators buy a set of them.
Obviously you can't have two neighbouring cells using the same frequency, or you'll knacker the speed - which is why they all need several bands to be running at once.
There are also different uses for different bands. The higher the wavelength, the more data throughput you can get, but the shorter the range. So you obviously want the higher freqency bands in cities - where each cell will be physically smaller (to accommodate the extra users).
I also seem to recall the higher frequencies are better at penetrating buildings. But if you'd only got those, they'd be useless for rural coverage, as you'd need many more masts.
As I recall 3 didn't have enough of the 3 and 5 GHz spectrum to be able to run a workable 4G service - and so EE were forced to sell them some of theirs - before getting the licence. But they did the dirty, by selling it, and delaying hand-over for a year, so they got a head-start on 4G sales.
> I also seem to recall the higher frequencies are better at penetrating buildings.
Other way round. Low is generally best for building penetration and long rural distances, hence why Three obtained some much-needed low spectrum a few years back. But higher frequencies can support higher throughput, which is what you want on crowded high streets. You need a mixture to build a national network.
As ever, those spectrum allocation figures indicate that the Three-O2 merger would have been 'fair' - based on percentages.
For all Ofcom's whingeing about Three blocking stuff it's Ofcom which has been sitting on it's corporate arse. The consultation for this spectrum sale was in 2014 (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/07/ofcom_omits_coverage_obligation_in_mod_spectrum_sale/)
The irony is that if BT does buy a huge chunk of 2.3 and 3.4 it may find itself frozen out of the 700MHz it must really want. That makes this spectrum much less desirable. And for all the bluster it's not really in the right place for Three. So that makes the lead bidders O2 and Vodafone. However Telefonica is lukewarm about the UK and has been trying to sell/float/forget about O2 which leaves an auction with just a canny Vodafone.
You have to wonder if it will make the reserve price will of £10m for a 10MHz / 2.3GHz lot and £1m for a 5MHz / 3.4GHz lot. But not as much as I wonder why an organisation which has a remit to "make the best possible use of available spectrum" has been sitting on it for four years,
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
