Monday, 10 Octorber 2011

The UK's telecoms regulator, Ofcom has reportedly delayed the country's planned 4G spectrum auction, although it hasn't issued a public comment about the issue.

In a statement sent to some media, the regulator wrote "We plan to publish a further consultation document around the end of this year. We will then give stakeholders an appropriate period of time in which to comment on our refined analysis and respond to our revised proposals - likely to be at least eight weeks,"

"Our aim will then be to make our decision and publish a statement in the summer of 2012. The auction itself would then follow a few months later - perhaps starting in Q4 2012."

The auction had been expected to take place in the first half of 2012.

The main contention appears to be over the spectrum cap for holdings below 1Ghz, with the regulator treating existing 900Mhz and pending 800mhzspectrum as comparable.

That decision pleased Hutchison 3G who face less competition to buy the 800Mhz spectrum, but annoyed Vodafone and O2 who hold substantial 900Mhz spectrum and want to buy the lower bands to boost rural coverage.

The delays are seen as beneficial to the two mobile networks, while Hutchison 3G and Everything Everywhere had been pushing for an early auction. However, the regulator noted that the radio spectrum in the 800MHz and 2.6GHz spectrum bands would not be available to use until 2013 anyway, so the auction delay should not affect when the services are made available to consumers.