In comments to Ofcom, Vodafone and Telefonica have sharply criticised the UK telecoms regulators proposal to relax Everything Everywhere’s (EE) 1800MHz spectrum licence.
The submissions, published today, were made as part of Ofcom’s consultation…
In comments to Ofcom, Vodafone and Telefonica have sharply criticised the UK telecoms regulators proposal to relax Everything Everywhere’s (EE) 1800MHz spectrum licence.
The submissions, published today, were made as part of Ofcom’s consultation process on the matter, following an announcement in March that the regulator is inclined to allow EE to use its 3G spectrum for 4G services.
“Ofcom has considered whether allowing Everything Everywhere to use this spectrum in this way would distort competition, and provisionally concluded that it would not,” the regulator had said in mid March.
EE’s own submission was also published today.
Both Vodafone and Telefonica accuse Ofcom of relying too much on an earlier European Commission decision, which paved the way for the creation of Everything Everywhere. The creation of the UK JV between T-Mobile and Orange received clearance in 2010, conditionally upon the divestment of a quarter of the combined spectrum of the merging parties in the 1800 MHz band.
This divestment process is currently under way.
Telefonica argues that the 2010 EC decision does not address the wider issue of spectrum liberalisation in the UK. Ofcom should therefore “consult fully and fairly on this matter in its entirety”.
Vodafone, making a similar argument, described the view that the EC’s earlier decision prevents Ofcom from re-assessing the situation as a “fundamental error”.
Both operators also doubt that EE’s first mover advantage would be limited to a rather short period if it was allowed to roll out 4G services on its 3G network now. “Even if one assumes that EE’s competitors can deploy their networks faster than EE to catch up the lost ground, given EE’s LTE headstart their advantage will clearly extend far longer than 15 months,” Vodafone wrote.
Telefonica said immediate liberalisation would create “a monopoly provider of 4G national wholesale services for a period of at least 18 months and very likely substantially longer”.
Everything Everywhere, in its own submission, argued that the competitive advantage would be limited. A full scale roll-out would take several years and performance of 4G services would only increase gradually. “[Any] competitive advantage which Everything Everywhere will obtain as a result will not be unmatchable or enduring and there will, therefore, be no distortion of competition”.
Ofcom said that the responses by Vodafone, Telefonica and other interested parties raised a number of “detailed issues” it now needed to consider carefully.
