British telecoms regulator Ofcom has given its blessing to Qualcomm’s (NASDAQ:QCOM) sale of L-band spectrum licences to mobile operators Vodafone (LSE:VOD) and Three.
British telecoms regulator Ofcom has given its blessing to Qualcomm’s (NASDAQ:QCOM) sale of L-band spectrum licences to mobile operators Vodafone (LSE:VOD) and Three.
The transactions were agreed at the end of August following a sales process conducted by Akira Partners and garnered a huge profit for the US chipmaker.
Ofcom said that, after assessing the spectrum holdings of UK operators, it did “not consider that either of the proposed trades would raise sufficient competition issues to justify further analysis”.
Vodafone and Three are each acquiring 20 MHz in the L-band and TelecomFinance understands they have paid £200m (US$312m) between them for the licences.
The sale price represents a huge profit on the £8.3m (US$13m) Qualcomm paid for the 15-year 1452 – 1492 MHz licence in 2008.
Approved for supplemental downlink (SDL) services earlier this year, the L-band frequencies will help Vodafone and Three meet demand for downlink-centric services such as video.
The European Union and Ofcom mandated the spectrum for SDL services in May, having worked with Qualcomm in recent years to create a new standard. The US group invested in R&D to design chips suitable to work with the band, although no handsets are compatible with the airwaves yet.