Ofcom UK Set Timetable for 5G Mobile Auction of 26GHz and 40GHz
The UK telecoms regulator has today set out their expected timetable for the long-in-gestation plan to auction off a large chunk of millimetre wave (mmW) radio spectrum frequency in the 26GHz and 40GHz bands, which will be used by mobile operators to deliver faster 5G (mobile broadband) services. But you’ll have to wait until October 2025.
At present EE (BT), O2 (Virgin Media), Vodafone and Three UK already have access to several 5G bands between 700MHz and 3.8GHz. Such frequencies reflect the same sort of mid-band radio spectrum that mobile network operators have been harnessing since the advent of the first 3G and 4G networks many years ago.
The move to auction off 26GHz (25.1-27.5GHz) and 40GHz (40.5-43.5GHz) is designed to complement those existing bands by providing lots of additional spectrum frequency to operators, which means more data capacity for extremely fast speeds (e.g. multi-Gigabit). But such signals tend to be very weak, which means they’re often only best for serving busy urban areas (shopping malls, airports etc.) and fixed wireless broadband (FWA) links.
Advertisement
However, the auction process for this, which was set out in 2023 (here), has been stuck in a state of limbo for much of 2024 while the country awaited a final decision on the mega-merger between Vodafone and Three UK. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) granted approval for that merger on 5th December 2024 (here), although “legal-completion” is still expected to take 3-6 months to achieve. As a result, Ofcom has today confirmed when the new bands will be auctioned off.
Ofcom Statement
On 5 December 2024, the CMA published its decision to approve the proposed merger between H3G and Vodafone’s UK businesses.
We have considered whether we need to review any of the policy decisions we have taken for the mmWave auction in light of the CMA’s decision, and we consider all of our decisions would remain appropriate in a three player market. In particular, we do not consider that the new structure of the market changes our reasoning for not imposing competition measures.
We will now commence preparation for the auction. In order to enable the merged entity to prepare for the auction, we currently expect to work to the following timetable:
- accept applications to participate in the auction on 16 and 17 September 2025; and
- begin the principal stage of the auction in October 2025.
Ofcom are currently aiming to award several 15-year, fixed term citywide licences (“high density areas”) to use the “new” mmWave bands – reflecting 68 major towns and cities across the UK, as well as some localised licences for “low density areas” within those cities via their Shared Access licensing framework. The UK is a long way behind other countries that have already awarded spectrum in the mmW bands, but one advantage of playing catch-up is that supporting mobile kit and device support should be more mature.
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, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
If only Apple sold mmWave compatible phones in the UK like they do in the USA
Most manufacturers don’t provide phones with mmWave to the UK operators or via the UK versions of their sites. Once the networks are active, they’ll start selling them.
works both ways. why put in the extra hardware when it can’t be used? Apple doesn’t actually make a UK specific iPhone, we get the same one that most of the world gets, so it would also need to be balanced against that.
Same reason why the Australians don’t get an mmWave iPhone even though Telstra has switched it on in a few places.
It’s funny how manufacturers don’t give us mmwave in our models but charge the same price
Too many lies were told about the benefits of 5G. The public have little or no interest, they certainly won’t pay a premium for it.
Yes they will like 5G home broadband and 6g will be here near future.
Maybe OFCOM in first place should put more effort in enforcement of fixing white spots and other neglected areas like poor quality of service. Selling more frequency will not make any difference, they all will screw this.
OFCOM are not fit for purpose. How they have allowed the mobile networks to turn off 3G without making them invest in 5G is the unmentioned scandal. If you live in a city, you probably wouldn’t notice. If you live anywhere else, your network is considerably worse than it used to be, I can’t drive to the end of the road in my urban town anymore without total network dropout anyway, where it used to happily flip between 4G and 3G.
I never used to see Edge, I now see it all the time.
Just come back from Sri Lanka, where I had fab 5G everywhere, even rural. The UK is so far behind the rest or the world.
I would seriously start with coverage on trains not mobile broadband. UK is the only country I’ve visited where you only get reliable signal at the stations. Try in Switzerland for example and you can maintain a Citrix session from Geneva to Zermatt. Try doing that on either WCML or MML.