News - Ofcom reveals plans to auction off more 4G spectrum

[HEXUS]

As the UK's 4G connections are predicted to be as slow as 3G in a year's time.

Read more.

[hellig]

Why auction it of so we have to pay more for the mobile net, and at the same time moan that each company protects their own network from roaming, since it will cost to to expand the net, /facepalm
give it to them for for the cost of expanding the mobile net, so we get better coverage!


silly silly government!

[shaithis]

They won't allow national roaming...All providers say the same, it ties their hands too much.

As for why auction it off.........I would have thought that was obvious!

[Jowsey]

Why auction it of so we have to pay more for the mobile net, and at the same time moan that each company protects their own network from roaming, since it will cost to to expand the net, /facepalm
give it to them for for the cost of expanding the mobile net, so we get better coverage!


silly silly government!

They won't allow national roaming...All providers say the same, it ties their hands too much.

As for why auction it off.........I would have thought that was obvious!

I can see pro's and cons. It's a money maker for the government but we eventually have to pay for it.

Perhaps a better model may have been some kind activity based charge? Or perhaps a rent based approach with companies being locked into 2 or 5 year leases? I'm sure people have considered these factors though.

[Jowsey]

Double post, sorry guys.

[LSG501]

Lets increase bandwidth on a service which I can't get anywhere near me.... hell I can't even get decent 3g where I live.

Ofcom, how about you get the mobile phone companies to give us a decent 3G connection EVERYWHERE in this country rather than selling more bandwidth for those who already can get 3G AND 4G .

Ofcom suggest roaming between providers... still wouldn't solve my 3G issue and iirc that only came about because Dave 'topic of the day for votes' Cameron had issues with his signal while on holiday in the countryside...
The only way we could get this type of roaming to work is to nationalise the phone networks and then rent them to the phone companies, doubt that would deal with my lack of 3G either .

[Odeas]

They're taking from some of the spectrum some wireless microphones use to do this (and i'm sure other things too).

This is going to be bad for anyone with systems using the frequencies being taken as they'll either no longer work or suffer massive interferance. This already happened once with the 4G switch over.

It does make sense as there's a lot more people using 4G than wireless mic's, not the perfect solution though. I'm still on 3G but the speeds are fine for me while I'm out and about not connected to Wifi, I don't quite get the big uproar with needing massive speeds.

I'm on a 50 meg line at home and 3G on my mobile. I can stream youtube fine on the go and whatever else I need as long as I have reasonable signal. Giving better coverage as a whole rather than raw speed would be so much better imo.

[crossy]

Lets increase bandwidth on a service which I can't get anywhere near me.... hell I can't even get decent 3g where I live.

Ofcom, how about you get the mobile phone companies to give us a decent 3G connection EVERYWHERE in this country rather than selling more bandwidth for those who already can get 3G AND 4G .

Ofcom suggest roaming between providers... still wouldn't solve my 3G issue and iirc that only came about because Dave 'topic of the day for votes' Cameron had issues with his signal while on holiday in the countryside...
The only way we could get this type of roaming to work is to nationalise the phone networks and then rent them to the phone companies, doubt that would deal with my lack of 3G either .

I've a suggestion - auction the 4G spectrum (as the article says) but (a) divert the money into funding an extension of the 3G net and/or (b) add a clause to the tendering process that states that the winning bidders have to give an undertaking to extend 3G coverage OR extend 4G coverage into no-3G areas.

Nationalisation of the mobile phone infrastructure sounds like a good idea to me - at least then there might be more widespread coverage. Although that hasn't happened with digital radio - there's still large areas of the country where it's just not available.

Final comment - bl**dy typical. I'm due to get 4G locally in the next six weeks and then this article comes along basically saying that when I do I'm likely to get speeds that aren't much better than 3G. To quote Kevin Sorbo ... disappointed!

[kingpotnoodle]

Lets increase bandwidth on a service which I can't get anywhere near me.... hell I can't even get decent 3g where I live.

Ofcom, how about you get the mobile phone companies to give us a decent 3G connection EVERYWHERE in this country rather than selling more bandwidth for those who already can get 3G AND 4G .

Ranting to "do 3G first" is fundamentally flawed - 4G has better range, capacity and transmission qualities and so you're more likely to get the signal you want by encouraging a faster adoption of 4G and halting deployment 3G/3.5G as it's an obsoleted technology.

IMHO what Ofcom should be doing is encouraging LTE deployment in rural areas and along major road/rail routes via subsidies etc, otherwise it will stay limited to more profitable city areas for many years to come.

[HalloweenJack]

Lets increase bandwidth on a service which I can't get anywhere near me.... hell I can't even get decent 3g where I live.

Ofcom, how about you get the mobile phone companies to give us a decent 3G connection EVERYWHERE in this country rather than selling more bandwidth for those who already can get 3G AND 4G .

Ofcom suggest roaming between providers... still wouldn't solve my 3G issue and iirc that only came about because Dave 'topic of the day for votes' Cameron had issues with his signal while on holiday in the countryside...
The only way we could get this type of roaming to work is to nationalise the phone networks and then rent them to the phone companies, doubt that would deal with my lack of 3G either .

do you live in the higlands of Scotland? basically phone companies will give the fastest speeds to where they can get a return on the investment the fastest , you know make the money to pay for it.

[crossy]

do you live in the higlands of Scotland? basically phone companies will give the fastest speeds to where they can get a return on the investment the fastest , you know make the money to pay for it.

You realise that the "highlands of Scotland" do actually have towns in them - e.g. Inverness, which is about as populous as Burnley? And I'm going to jump to the defence of LSG501 in that 3G coverage - given the amount of time it's been "out there" - is actually pretty poor. I've heard from various folks about "3G black spots" in the middle of cities (last one was Bristol) so the "not enough population to make it commercially viable" argument really doesn't work for all circumstances.

That was also the point the LSG501 was trying to make - nationalise the mobile network and it becomes an "essential service" so should be provided universally. Okay, the downside (for some) is that population-dense areas (London) end up effectively subsidising those wild 'n' wooly reaches like the Highlands, Cumbria or Cornwall. But at least our PM could then check his Facebook links...

As I said above, I'd be more in favour of leaving the private companies in charge, but perhaps using the spectrum auctions to encourage a bit more breadth of coverage across the country.

On the upside, at least our mobile market is better than that in the US!