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The UK communications regulator, Ofcom, has this morning revealed the initial (principal stage) results from their auction of the 26GHz and 40GHz millimetre wave (mmW) spectrum bands for use by 5G mobile (mobile broadband) operators, which saw EE (BT), O2 (Virgin Media) and Vodafone (VodafoneThree) pay a combined £39m to secure more airwaves.
Overall EE, O2 and VodafoneThree each won 800MHz of spectrum frequency in the 26GHz band and 1GHz of spectrum frequency in the 40GHz band – each paying £13m for this spectrum. The total revenue raised from the Principal stage is £39m, which will now go to HM Treasury. But this isn’t the end of the process.
Just to recap. The major mobile network providers already have access to several 5G capable bands between 700MHz and 3.8GHz. Such frequencies reflect the same sort of low and mid-band radio spectrum that the mobile operators have been using since the advent of the first 3G and 4G data networks.
The move to auction off 26GHz (25.1-27.5GHz) and 40GHz (40.5-43.5GHz) is intended to complement those existing bands by providing lots of additional spectrum frequency, which means more data capacity for extremely fast speeds (e.g. multi-Gigabit).
However, such high frequency mobile signals tend to be very weak and can’t cover a wider area without a much denser and thus more expensive network, which in practice means they’ll primarily be used for serving busy urban areas (shopping malls, airports etc. – “High Density Areas“) and fixed wireless broadband (FWA) links. This is why Ofcom has made the spectrum available in a clock auction (200MHz lots) with 15-year licences across 68 “high-density” areas (i.e. cities and select transport hubs).
The detailed results from the first principal stage of this auction can be seen below, which saw the three operators bid for airwaves in ‘lots’ to determine how much spectrum each company wins in each band, but not the specific frequencies within each band.
David Willis, Ofcom’s Group Director for Spectrum, said:
“Today’s results are an important milestone on the path to better, faster 5G. The large amount of spectrum we’ve released will help support innovation, open doors to new applications and growth, and can bring noticeable improvements to mobile services in busier places up and down the UK.”
The auction will now move to the final Assignment Stage, which is where the operators will be able to determine the specific frequencies that winning bidders will be allocated. The catch is that it will take time for the network operators to fully harness the new bands, not least because many modern devices (Smartphones, routers etc.) don’t yet support them, and they’ll also need to upgrade their respective networks.