Ofcom Publish Final Results of UK 5G Mobile Auction for 26GHz and 40GHz

The UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom, has this morning revealed the final (assignment stage) results of last week’s auction of the 26GHz and 40GHz millimetre wave (mmW) spectrum bands for use by 5G mobile broadband operators, which sets out precisely which frequencies within each band will be allocated to EE, O2 and VodafoneThree (Vodafone and Three UK).

Just to recap. The three mobile operators won a combined 800MHz of spectrum frequency in the 26GHz band and 1GHz of spectrum frequency in the 40GHz band – each paying £13m for this spectrum. The total revenue raised from the Principal stage were £39m, which has gone to HM Treasury. But a final assignment stage was needed in order to decide precisely which parts of each band would go to whom.

Following completion of the assignment stage, Ofcom has now granted licences to the three bidders for the following frequencies across the two bands. This means the auction is now fully complete, and the winners are free to deploy the spectrum in accordance with the conditions of their licences:

• EE – 26.7-27.5 GHz and 41.5-42.5 GHz
• O2 – 25.1-25.9 GHz and 40.5-41.5 GHz
• VodafoneThree – 25.9-26.7 GHz and 42.5-43.5 GHz

At present, most mobile operators already have access to several 5G capable bands between 700MHz and 3.8GHz. Such frequencies reflect the same sort of low and mid-band radio spectrum that the mobile operators have been using since the advent of the first 3G and 4G data networks. But 26GHz (25.1-27.5GHz) and 40GHz (40.5-43.5GHz) are intended to complement that by providing lots of additional spectrum, which means more data capacity for extremely fast speeds (e.g. multi-Gigabit).

However, such high frequency mobile signals tend to be very weak and can’t cover a wider area without a much denser and thus more expensive network, which in practice means they’ll primarily be used for serving busy urban areas (shopping malls, airports etc. – “High Density Areas“) and fixed wireless broadband (FWA) links. Ofcom has thus made the spectrum available with 15-year licences across 68 “high-density” areas (i.e. cities and select transport hubs).

The catch is that it will take time for the network operators to fully harness the new bands, not least because many modern devices (Smartphones, routers etc.) and radio kit don’t yet fully support them. We suspect there will be some event and location specific deployments in the near future, although a wider roll-out may only become feasible once support improves.