Posted: 27th Jan, 2009 By: MarkJ
The Communications Minister's (Lord Carter) Digital Britain report may have been delayed by a few days but that hasn't stopped a raft of information leaks. The latest includes a claim that UK mobile operators (e.g.
Vodafone,
O2 etc.) will not have to renew their 3G (
Mobile Broadband) licenses provided they support the goverments universal broadband plans.
It's already well known that Carter intends to make all major operators responsible for bringing broadband capable of at least 2Mbps to everybody in the UK by 2012. However until now it wasn't clear quite how he'd win their support for such a potentially expensive (up to £2bn) project.
The rumoured proposal to mobile operators suggests that such providers might even be allowed to keep their 3G licences indefinitely. Mind you they did pay nearly £23 billion for them in the first place, which many believe to have been considerably over priced.
Elsewhere it's been confirmed that UK ISPs will not be required to disconnect illegal file sharers (P2P) from their networks, although this is nothing new and has been ruled out many times before as well.