O2 gets legal on Ofcom O2 has appealed to the Competition Appeals Tribunal to force Ofcom into varying its 900MHz licence to allow 3G deployment, though the competition won't be impressed. O2, like Vodafone, was given some 900MHz spectrum in which to run a 2G telephony service, back in the days when spectrum was allocated, not sold. Since then the …
Alow them to operate 4g on those bands if they commit to bidding for the 800 bands and put down a deposit of intent for bidding which they lose if they dont win any bids.
That way they get chance to use new technology given they will be investing in new kit anyhow, also commits them to it with the 800 bid and free's up some of the 900 which can be includided in the 800 bids as package deal's with priority weighting to operators without anything in that range.
Of course they would also have to force the goverment to a date for the 800 auctions, but at least its a way out. They have the spectrum yes, but they get what they paid for currently, the regulator could say, well your right its no use to you without 3g and were now looking at 4g technology so we will take it back and give you a full refund of what you paid for your 900 spectrum slice - simples.
Now if they force carriers to allow compertition and fair cost usage of there infrastructure with landlines why cant they look at the wirless forms as well, be ncie counter from the regulator. Price cappinging is always a term that gets carriers bending over and going lets talk.
ANON because acording to an email I dead last week
I dislike spectrum auctions. Spectrum is a limited but shared resource and we could do so much better than ream the public by proxy for its use. What if we pooled together a sack of spectrum and give it in its entirety to a non-profit to manage at cost. They'd run an electronic market maker to hand out small chunks, big enough for one voice circuit and up, on a tower-by-tower and call-by-call basis. They wouldn't need to own the towers but maybe it'd end up like that anyway. That'd mean coverage based on overall utilisation and not on rought long term operator guesses times the number of operators around.
Since the cost of entry has suddenly become much cheaper, we might see many more MVNOs with the ones that run the towers possibly ending up as hardware brokers on top of the spectrum broker. Of course you now must now find and negotiate the best deal electronically, but for this purpose that probably isn't a problem. Then do this trick to cover all of europe.
For spectrum we could use, say, 900MHz and one higher-up band for when propagation in the higher band is good enough, relieving the lower one. Allow all services on all bands but make hogging large chunks of prime spectrum progressively more expensive when demand rises. Widen up the 900MHz one a bit maybe, and make sure the rules are the same for all of Europe, then start roping in Africa, Asia, and so on. North Americans just have to be contrary so I'd not bother inviting them to the party. They'll invite themselves if they can stand admitting we have a good thing going anyway (and then try and change the rules by way of compliment--which is fine, just don't give in).
I think this stands a much better chance of optimal ``free market'' spectrum use than the current ``pay us lots so you must ream your customers'' style ``liberalisation''. And no, it isn't meddling any more than giving ofcom spectrum to do the one thing they know what to do with, auction it off to the highest bidder.
... the arguable reason why Orange, T-Mobile and Three aren't crap indoors is because they're using highers powers than Voda and O2 and more base stations. Other reasoning available on request.
The fact of the matter is that the EU has ruled in favour of the consumer in knowledge of the merits of good 3G coverage for both businesses and consumers alike.
The UK operators have to play ball with it. Anything else is bad for the consumer.
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