The auction, which is described by the government as the largest ever sale of mobile airwaves in the UK, will be contested by seven organisations including a subsidiary of BT that have qualified to bid.
The sale will start in January 2013 with Everything Everywhere Limited (UK), HKT (UK) Company Limited (a subsidiary of PCCW Limited), Hutchison 3G UK Limited, MLL Telecom Ltd, Niche Spectrum Ventures Limited (a subsidiary of BT Group plc), Telefónica UK Limited and Vodafone Limited.
Bidders will be competing to acquire new capacity to roll out superfast 4G mobile broadband services to cities, towns and villages across the UK.
“This new spectrum will boost the amount of airwaves available to mobile phones by more than 75% and will play a critical role in helping to meet a growing demand for mobile data among consumers, Ofcom said.
Ed Richards, Ofcom chief executive, added: “The 4G auction will be a competitive process that will dictate the shape of the UK mobile phone market for the next decade and beyond.
“New 4G services will stimulate investment, growth and innovation in the UK and deliver significant benefits to consumers in terms of better, faster and more reliable mobile broadband connections.”
The announcement of qualified bidders comes after, in July 2012, Ofcom published the outcome of its competition assessment of the UK mobile market. This concluded that UK consumers are likely to benefit from better services at lower prices if there are “at least four credible” national wholesalers of mobile services.
Therefore, in the interests of competition, Ofcom said has designed the auction in a way intended to achieve this outcome.
“Bidders will be competing for spectrum in two separate bands – 800MHz and 2.6GHz. The lower frequency 800MHz band is part of the ’digital dividend’ freed up when analogue terrestrial TV was switched off, which is ideal for widespread mobile coverage,” the watchdog explained.
“The higher frequency 2.6GHz band is ideal for delivering the capacity needed to deliver faster speeds. These two bands add up to 250MHz of additional mobile spectrum, compared to 333MHz in use today. Both bands are being packaged into smaller lots for the auction. This combination of low and high frequency spectrum creates the potential for 4G mobile broadband services to be widely available across the UK, while offering capacity to cope with significant demand in urban centres.”
