A telecoms analyst working for Ovum has warned that the rollout of future 4G ( LTE , WiMAX ) Mobile Broadband services in the UK could be delayed until 2013 because a new incoming government might be reluctant to deal with the situation for another year or more. This could potentially damage cross-party plans to make a minimum broadband speed of 2Mbps available to everybody in the country by 2012.


The concern centres around auctions for radio spectrum in the 800MHz (currently still used for old analogue TV signals) and 2.6GHz frequency bands. Plans to sell off the related frequency were effectively put on hold before the general election and may not be tackled again as a priority for awhile.


Yesterday also saw the European Commission (EC) adopt a decision that harmonises the technical standards and allocation for 800Mhz (790-862MHz) radio spectrum (here), which was one of the final hurdles prior to any auctions taking place among member states. It now remains to be seen how much impetus the related bands will get.