UK regulator Ofcom has said it will bring forward the release of certain 4G frequencies by six months to H1 2013, after operators agreed to forego legal action.
In a meeting chaired late yesterday by culture secretary Maria Miller, mobile operators EE,…
UK regulator Ofcom has said it will bring forward the release of certain 4G frequencies by six months to H1 2013, after operators agreed to forego legal action.
In a meeting chaired late yesterday by culture secretary Maria Miller, mobile operators EE, Vodafone, O2 and 3 agreed in principle to avoid delaying the country’s upcoming 4G auction process further through litigation.
Some operators had threatened legal action against EE after Ofcom gave the group a head start by allowing it to deploy 4G services with existing spectrum. EE plans to commercially launch 4G on 30 October.
With the apparent success of yesterday’s peace talks, Ofcom said it was now on track to begin the 4G auction at the end of this year, with bidding for the 800MHz and 2.6GHz spectrum due to take place in early 2013.
Further to this, the regulator said that, following separate discussions with TV broadcasters, it has secured the earlier release of frequencies that were previously used for digital-terrestrial broadcasting.
The clearance date for TV transmitters in Oxford and Waltham, for example, has been brought forward by five months to May 2013, affecting around nine million people in cities including London. Meanwhile, a clearance date that will impact approximately one million people around Glasgow and Edinburgh has been brought forward by five months to May 2013.
This timetable acceleration will enable competitive 4G services across the UK during the first half of 2013 – narrowing EE’s head start.
Ofcom CEO Ed Richards said: “The actions we have taken with industry and government avoids the risk of significant delay and is tremendous news for consumers who might otherwise have waited a considerable period for the next generation of mobile broadband services.”
Informa analyst Mark Newman said the accelerated 4G timetable was good news for EE’s rivals, although the operator still had an important window of opportunity to capture significant market share from high-end mobile users.
“The situation is similar, in many ways, to the periods of exclusivity granted to operators when the iPhone first launched,” said Newman.
“O2 managed to cement itself as the leading UK operator during this period and associate itself with an aspirational product like the iPhone. EE is going to launch a major national advertising campaign in the coming weeks and the combination of an attractive new brand, faster speeds and the iPhone 5 [which will operate on the 4G network] is going to be a pretty compelling proposition.”
