The UK Communications Workers Union (CWU) has suggested that any proceeds coming out of Ofcom's forthcoming auction for 4G viable Mobile Broadband radio spectrum (i.e. 800MHz and 2.6GHz), which could be worth up to £4bn or possibly more, should be used to help fund the rollout of next generation superfast broadband ISP connections across the country.

At present the government's Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) office has only allocated £530m to the task until 2015 (could rise to £830m by 2017), which will mostly come from the BBC's 3.5% Digital Switchover budget. We expect that this will still leave roughly 10% of the country without access to a proper next gen broadband connection.

The CWU believes that using money from the auction could also take the pressure off BBC funding cuts by using a different stream to fund broadband, while leaving the TV Licence Fee and digital switchover money where it is.


On the surface this sounds like a good and fairly logical idea, although it does rather assume that the government hasn't already thought about how to allocate any potential proceeds, such as to help plug the country's massive deficit.

It's sometimes easy to forget that Ofcom's auction process has effectively been in development for several years and as a result the CWU's plea may have come far too late for it to have any real impact. That being said, it's not a bad idea. Credits to Thinkbroadband for spotting the link.