Mobile Phone Providers Scrap Politely Over Bits of Spectrum to Enable Lord Carter’s “Digital Britain”

Lord Carter’s “Digital Britain” paper, with its promise of 2Mb broadband for all by 2012, looks pretty lame when South Korea are going to be getting 1Gb as standard – that’s 500 times faster, maths fans. But what the hey, if you live in the Fens or up Snowdon or something, 2Mb will be a lot better than cycling to the local shop to get yesterday’s newspaper.

At the Mobile World Congress, a rather schmancy name for a mobile phone industry conference, industry body GSM Association called today for the spectrum freed up by the switch to digital telly to be devoted to providing mobile broadband for those in remote areas. That comes as beef over spectrum is getting thrashed about between the mobile providers in the UK, with O2, 3, Vodafone, Orange and T-Mobile all convening to discuss how to fairly provide mobile broadband across Britain.

The most likely and cheap way of getting broadband out to the sticks is via mobile networks rather than actual physical lines. At the moment, O2 and Vodafone run on the 900Mhz bit of the radiowaves, which is good for sending information across long distances; the other guys run on 1800Mhz, which is better for intense use in urban areas. Don’t ask us why, it probably involves “amplitude”, “wavelength” and other terminology ignored in favour of poring over Gail Porter during science lessons. But as part of the Digital Britain overhaul, O2 and Vodafone will have to give up some of their 900Mhz to the other companies, in order to not have a duopoly for those remote regions that can only receive 900Mhz; Lord Carter’s proposal was to have the two operators give up some spectrum over the next couple of years, and auction it off to a third operator.

The operators didn’t want that, leading as it probably would to an inflated price that the government would pocket, so they’ve set up a round table discussion to come to a harmonious divvying up of spectrum. Moderating it is our old chum Kip Meek, former Ofcom chair turned hawker of dubious advertising software Phorm – let’s hope he doesn’t pour poison in the operators ears about that particular bag o’ crap over the complimentary croissants afterwards.

According to silicon.com, the chat has started well enough, with Vodafone saying it was “all very constructive” last week. Carter’s giving them til April to sort it out, otherwise then he’s going ahead with putting the spectrum under the hammer.

Hopefully if some of the digital telly spectrum gets sold off to the mobile providers as GSM want, then it’ll ease the squabbling, but no doubt it’s going to be the first of many arguments as the public and private sector try to disguise their respective profiteering under a veil of “taking Britain forward into the 21st century” or some such thing. Stay tuned for more!

Posted by Ben Beaumont-Thomas in Sci-tech | February 16, 2009 1:45PM |