OutFact

Vodafone and O2 will not be allowed to claim any part of the spectrum that will be available in 2012, when TV signals would switch from analogue to digital formats. This was proposed as the new plan of action by Kip Meek, the most trusted man of Stephen Carter, the Communications Minister of Britain, in order to resolve the spectrum reallocation issue, talks about which have been continuing for the past few weeks. The telecom companies were supposed to reach a mutually acceptable decision by April 30, which did not happen. Disappointed with this, Meek has presented the new plan of action.

According to Meek’s solution, Vodafone and O2 will be allowed to retain ownership of the 900MHz spectrum, which was awarded to them in the ’80s, but the two operators would be disallowed from getting a part of the spectrum freed by the digital TV switch. If the solution proposed by Meek is implemented and finally some progress is made on spectrum allocation, it would be a huge relief for the government, which is trying to persuade the mobile operators to provide broadband in rural areas.

As the 900MHz range is recognized as ideal for mobile broadband, the other telecom suppliers in the country are not too pleased with Meek’s new proposal. T-Mobile and Orange are in fact in favour of Ofcom’s solution, which suggests taking away part of the 900 MHz spectrum, owned by Vodafone and O2. Confused?… take a look at a website all about mobile broadband.

It is difficult to see all parties coming to a consensus, and it seems government intervention has become necessary to resolve this long-standing issue.

Explore posts in the same categories: Computing World, End Users, The Telecommunication Way

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 at 7:46 am and is filed under Computing World, End Users, The Telecommunication Way. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.