Ofcom has announced plans for the auction of mobile services in the UK for the fourth generation LTE (4G) of mobile technology.

Offering significantly faster mobile broadband services – approaching today’s ADSL home broadband speeds.

New mobile capacity

The auction will be for two spectrum bands – 800 MHz and 2.6 GHz. The lower frequency 800 MHz band is part of the digital dividend, which is being freed-up as the UK switches from analogue to digital TV. This spectrum is ideal for widespread mobile coverage. The 2.6 GHz band is at a higher frequency, and is ideal for delivering the capacity needed to deliver higher speeds. These two bands add up to 250 MHz of additional mobile spectrum.

The combination of low and high frequency spectrum available in the 800 MHz and 2.6 GHz bands creates the potential for next generation mobile broadband services to be widely available across the UK, while at the same time having the capacity to cope with significant demand, even in urban centres.

Securing wide availability of next generation mobile broadband

Ofcom proposes to include a coverage obligation in one licence for the 800 MHz spectrum. The obligation would require the licensee to provide a mobile broadband service covering 95% of the UK population. It is expected that bidders will factor in the cost of achieving this obligation when making bids for the licence. This should result in coverage for future mobile broadband services that approaches today’s 2G coverage. The date for meeting these obligations would be the end of 2017.

Securing coverage in more rural areas

Statistics on current 2G and 3G coverage demonstrate that coverage varies between areas of the UK, with coverage in more rural areas generally being less comprehensive than in urban areas. This is particularly significant for 3G coverage.

One way of ensuring more uniformity of coverage for 4G services in future would be to supplement the main coverage obligation described above with a requirement to cover a certain proportion of the population in particular areas – for example in certain rural areas. Stakeholders are being encouraged to give their views on the feasibility and appropriateness of this.

Timings

Ofcom wants the benefits of 4G services to be available as soon as possible and we are therefore aiming to start the auction in the first quarter of 2012, subject to this consultation.

The consultation is available here.

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