Ofcom is proposing to introduce the biggest round of radio spectrum trading the UK wireless communications market has yet seen.
The communications regulator wants to free the logjam that has prevented the proliferation of wireless broadband services, which are needed in the eyes of many to create expansion in the mobile phone market.
In 1989, the UK government put the UK ahead of the rest of Europe in mobile phone services by issuing four licences when most countries were opting for one or two.
These new plans by Ofcom to release a number of chunks of spectrum through an auction will be a shake-up of radio spectrum allocation and usage on a similar scale to 1989’s Phones on the Move initiative.
In 2009, there is more than a hint that the UK’s pathfinding approach, which started with second generation mobile services in the 1990s, has run out of steam and that countries such as Germany, Sweden and Italy have taken a more innovative approach to 3G services such as mobile TV.
Ofcom has already proposed that the conditions on spectrum usage attached to 2G and 3G licences in the 1980s and 1990s be removed.
The regulator’s latest plan, which would involve spectrum trading on a scale not seen either here or anywhere else in Europe, is designed to put the UK back in the race for Europe’s most competitive and lucrative 3G and 4G services which will require wireless broadband access both in the home and on the move.
The regulator’s intentions are clear: to create greater competition in the commercial market for next generation wireless broadband services, both fixed and mobile. As such it mirrors what the government did in the early 1990s with the creation of Europe’s most liberalised and competitive mobile phone market.
It’s a radical move. Ofcom wants existing 900MHz licensees to each release 10MHz of spectrum, which will be auctioned to new competitors. Further to this, the licences would be tradable to ensure what Ofcom called “the most efficient use”.
With the wireless sector, which is so important to the UK’s high-tech community, facing a downturn of uncertain severity, it is even more important in 2009 than in 1989 that this shake-up of the mobile services market succeeds.