News - 4G auction winners are announced by Ofcom

[ajones]

Didn't it need different equipment though? With LTE, one set should be capable of both if I understand it correctly?

No; the baseband is different. Although the network architecture in LTE has been simplified over GSM and UMTS, I don't think there is a solution available yet that combines both FDD and TDD into a single platform. The radio units could probably be common, as could the core network, but not the brains of the base station.

There's also the mobiles to consider. They're having a hard enough time dealing with the dozens of LTE bands (and band combinations when it comes to LTE-A and carrier aggregation) that throwing FDD + TDD into the mix is going to be tricky when you have such a small platform to work with. I wouldn't expect and all-band device anytime soon.

[badass]

The government forecast £3.5bn so there's another shortfall the tax payers will have to foot. Also considerably lower than the bidding of 3g which back in the day I believe to have been over £20bn in total

And which indirectly caused a recession in the IT industry. There's always a flip side.

[ajones]

And which indirectly caused a recession in the IT industry. There's always a flip side.

bingo. You can't suck that much money out of an industry without there being significant impact. People say that the UK is behind when it comes to LTE. We are, but where's the investment going to come from to fund it!

When I find that mystic tree, I'll be sure to keep it secret and hoard all the cash for myself

[watercooled]

No; the baseband is different. Although the network architecture in LTE has been simplified over GSM and UMTS, I don't think there is a solution available yet that combines both FDD and TDD into a single platform. The radio units could probably be common, as could the core network, but not the brains of the base station.

There's also the mobiles to consider. They're having a hard enough time dealing with the dozens of LTE bands (and band combinations when it comes to LTE-A and carrier aggregation) that throwing FDD + TDD into the mix is going to be tricky when you have such a small platform to work with. I wouldn't expect and all-band device anytime soon.

I'm not certain, but I thought the idea was to allow compatibility in a single platform, and I think radio equipment is definitely common. But even if different hardware is required at the base, it shouldn't really matter - the operator could decide they want TDD for a few cells in a city centre, for instance (theoretically shorter reach than FDD, but possibly higher speed) where the cells are packed fairly tightly. They're not going to be running TDD and FDD through the same cell anyway.

As for the phones, recent basebands support FDD, TDD and TD-SCDMA. Not too sure about the radio front-end though.

All that aside, I don't see the point in handing out a not-insignificant portion of spectrum which isn't likely to be used?