UK to get first taste of 4G ‘before Christmas’

Ofcom ruling due today could give Everything Everywhere big lead over rivals

UK telecoms regulator Ofcom is expected to give the green light today [21st August 2012] for Everything Everywhere to sell a chunk of its spectrum to the Britain’s smallest operator, Three – giving Britain its first taste of superfast 4G within months.
If the sale is approved it would also allow EE, the owner of the T-Mobile and Orange networks, to start using some of its spectrum for 4G before Christmas and well ahead of rivals such as Vodafone and O2 who will have to wait until the forthcoming 4G spectrum auction. EE, the owner of the T-Mobile and Orange networks and Britain’s largest operator with 27 million customers, has been installing the necessary equipment since the start of the year and already has major cities and towns covered.

Not surprisingly, rival operators have lobbied Ofcom to argue that, if EE does get approval today, it will unfairly give the company a massive advantage.

Behind the scenes there has already been intense lobbying by Vodafone and others that Britain is lagging behind other countries in the roll-out of 4G and that the £4.5 billion auction of new spectrum, currently used for digital television, is taking far too long.

As EE combines two networks, it has a large amount of spectrum in the 1800 band which is well suited to 4G.

It applied for liberalisation of the 1800 band, currently licensed for 2G and 3G services, in November last year [2011] but because of protests has had to wait until now.

UPDATE: See the Ofcom announcement here.