Ofcom to Begin UK 4G and 5G Mobile Spectrum Auction Next Week
The national telecoms regulator has today confirmed that their auction of 4G and 5G friendly Mobile spectrum, which will see 40MHz of frequency in the 2.3GHz band (2350-2390MHz) and 150MHz in the 3.4GHz band (3410-3480MHz and 3500-3580MHz) being distributed, will begin on Tuesday 20th March.
The auction process is expected to run for “a number of weeks” before Ofcom will be able to confirm which of the six bidding operators (here) have won some of the spectrum. The 2.3GHz band is more suited to modern 4G based services and EE will not be able to bid on that, while all operators will be able to bid on the future 5G ultrafast Mobile Broadband friendly 3.4GHz band.
Enough has been written about this auction over the past few months and so we won’t repeat all of that again today (see link above). The first commercial 5G services aren’t expected to launch until 2020 but plenty of trials will take place before then.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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Perhaps 5G will be a good replacement for FTTC as 4G was for DSL.
Depends on the complex issue of capacity and data allowances (requires “unlimited” use), as well as affordability. While advanced users may also worry about CGNAT or other Traffic Management issues. I think it will be awhile before normal 5G Mobile (i.e. excluding the fixed wireless variant) can truly beat home broadband across the board and by then the UK might be home to a lot more FTTH/P.
Considering how data allowances evolved from 3G to 4G, I’d expect 5G to be quite usuable for most people.
EE offers quite reasonable mobile router packages, 200GB for £60 p/m.
VPN should be able to solve the CGNAT/Traffic Management issues.
Maybe 5G will be what finally ushers in take up of IPv6 in order to sidestep CGNAT?