Light Reading – UK’s £1.4B ‘5G’ Auction Looks Bad for Industry
The 3.4GHz spectrum band is hugely important for 5G, as it lets operators add extra capacity to their existing networks without having to add many new basestation sites,” said Bengt Nordström, the CEO of the Northstream consulting business, in emailed comments. “This explains why the operators’ bids for this band were so much higher than expected.”…
In Nordström’s view, UK regulatory authority Ofcom was wrong to auction spectrum and should instead have agreed a license fee with each operator. China’s regulator has previously followed that approach. By awarding spectrum to operators at minimal cost, it has ensured companies have more to spend on network deployment. In the UK, the unlikelihood a 5G auction would bring a new entrant into the market, and its failure to do so, makes “the idea of a competitive spectrum auction even more strange,” according to Nordström.
