Offcom offload hits cheaper end of the spectrum

Bargain basement broadband

Ten grand a license

They paid billions for 3G licences, so the mobile operators must be crying bitter salty tears over the bargain basement prices for UK bandwidth in the latest Ofcom auction, reports Tony Dennis in TheInquirer.net.

“At these prices, they should have done it on eBay” said one wag, as the cheapest of the ten licences under the hammer went for just ten grand.

That’s ten thousand once, ten thousand twice, ten thousand – come on, this is an extremely valuable regional license and we want more than just the asking price – oh well, ten thousand pounds, sold to the gentleman wearing the Red-M badge.
 
T-Mobile paid the most £321,000 while Orange went home £272,000 lighter.

Arquiva – which is into mobile TV – had to pay £260,000 for a national.license while, at the other end of the scale, Transfinite got a steal at £20,000

Ofcom sold the licences on a technology neutral basis, which means the winners can do anything they like with the capacity. Better still, they can trade the licences to another company if they end up with something that proves valuable later.

So licences can be utilised to provide high capacity wireless broadband. Those living in areas remote from the nearest telephone exchange might even stand a chance of being offered a decent broadband connexion.

TheInquirer.net seemed impressed by MLL Telecom. “Seems to have the right idea,” reported mobile analyst Tony Dennis. “It obviously intends to use the spectrum it's gained in the 32 GHz and 40 GHz ranges to provide backhaul for 3G, 4G, LTE and Wimax.”

An issues the mobile operators haven’t addressed is the speed of the connection to their base stations. They claim the network can potentially supply something like 7.2 Mbit/s to a single HSDPA user, but the base station itself is lucky if it's got 20 Mbit/s to share around. “Do the maths,” pleads Dennis.

It's a bit of a puzzle, he says, mocking a statement by Rick Hudson, CEO with MLL Telecom, who said: "The calibre of companies participating was extremely high - reflecting the importance of this spectrum."

Oh dear, says Tony Dennis. “How much would Transfinite have had to pay if less importance had been given to the auction? A fiver?”

 

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