Ofcom, the UK regulator and competition authority in charge of telecoms and broadcasting, is trying to convince its national counterparts and Brussels to free up airwaves currently reserved for third generation mobile phones (3G).
In 2000, European regulators decided to make extra spectrum (the radio waves over which all wireless communications are transmitted) available for 3G services currently being rolled out. And the Commission is currently looking to harmonise the way frequencies are used in this band so that people do not have to switch handset when they travel across Europe.
But Ofcom argues that this band (in the 2500MHz - 2690MHz range) is being under-utilised and should be opened up to competition from other applications such as wireless internet services (WI-FI, WiMax).
"The crucial point is to keep options open, allowing room for the further successful development of [3G] if that is what the market dictates," Ofcom's Communications Manager Simon Bates told EurActiv. The risk, he argues, is the "underuse of the valuable 2.6GHz band if other technologies prove more successful".
The UK opened up its own airwaves market for trading on 23 December 2004. It is currently the only EU country with such a system in place. According to Ofcom, the market potential if all EU countries adopted its trading policy would amount to 9 billion euros a year.
However, it needs to get qualified majority approval from its European counterparts in the European Regulators' Group (ERG) if it wants to open auctions in the 2.6GHz band.
"Generally speaking, we are reserved on the flexibilisation of spectrum policy," a French diplomatic source told EurActiv, because it "could create interferences" with other frequencies. The underlying question, he said, is whether to opt for an ex-ante or an ex-post approach to regulation. "The French position tends to be in favour of ex-ante," said the source.
"The model of reserving spectrum exclusively for a given technology, or even a family of technologies, is outmoded," argues Ofcom's Simon Bates. "It worked well in the early days of mobile telephony when technical change was relatively slow and choices were fewer. But the world looks very different now."
