Everything Everywhere To Sell UK 4G Spectrum 16
judgecorp writes "UK operator Everything Everywhere is opening up the market for 4G services by selling some 1800MHz spectrum. Real 4G is slow to arrive in Britain as the big spectrum auction is still stalled, but Everything Everywhere is planning to deliver LTE services this year. European competition law required Everything Everywhere to sell spectrum to its rivals when it was formed from the UK networks of T-Mobile and Orange."
1800MHz is not what's the most valuable... (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a real shitstorm brewing in the UK over mobile phone frequency allocations. There were originally two GSM networks (which are now O2 and Vodafone) operating in the 900MHz band on gifted spectrum. What became T-Mobile and Orange got spectrum at 1800MHz a bit later. There was a subsequent auction of bandwidth for 3G at 2100MHz which all four acquired along with new entrant Three. T-Mobile and Orange have now merged into Everything Everywhere and therefore have lots more spectrum than everyone else. However, it's the 900MHz band - together with spectrum around 800MHz which has been cleared of analogue TV - which is the real prize as it's propagation characteristics are much better, particularly within buildings.
The real issue going forward is going to be the equitable distribution of 800MHz and 900MHz for 4G use and since various subsets of all the networks are disadvantaged either by the status quo or any change to the status quo, every proposal so far has been met with threats of lawyers at dawn. More 1800MHz spectrum is second best.
This is one of those situations in which "let the market decide" is probably going to result in stalemate or a seriously suboptimal solution for the consumer.