UK comms regulator Ofcom has announced the outcome of the Principal stage of its auction to release more airwaves to improve 5G in the busiest places.

A total of 5.4 GHz of spectrum was up for grabs – the most ever to be made available in an Ofcom auction.

This spectrum, known as ‘mmWave’ because of its short wavelengths of around 10 millimetres, is split across two bands: 26 GHz and 40 GHz.

It is ideal for improving capacity in crowded places where lots of people want to use their phone at the same time, such as at football stadiums, major concert venues and transport hubs. Mobile network operators will be able to deploy it in 68 towns and cities across the UK.

Three companies – EE, O2 and VodafoneThree – took part in the Principal stage of the auction, which involved them bidding for airwaves in ‘lots’ to determine how much of the available spectrum they each secured. Principal stage bidding has now ended and Ofcom has published the results.

EE, O2 and VodafoneThree each won 800 MHz of spectrum in the 26 GHz band and 1 GHz of spectrum in the 40 GHz band.

They have committed to pay £13 million (€15m) each for this spectrum.

The total revenue raised from the Principal stage is £39 million, which will go to HM Treasury.

The auction will now move to the Assignment stage. The companies can bid for the frequency positions they prefer for the airwaves they have secured in the Principal stage.

The final results of the auction, including the total amounts paid and the specific frequencies secured for each bidder period, will be published once all stages are complete.

David Willis, Ofcom’s Group Director for Spectrum, said: “Today’s results are an important milestone on the path to better, faster 5G. The large amount of spectrum we’ve released will help support innovation, open doors to new applications and growth, and can bring noticeable improvements to mobile services in busier places up and down8 the UK.”

“This new investment in high speed, high capacity mobile airwaves is a strong result from the auction and pairs perfectly with our strategy to transform our mobile network and give our customers a trustworthy and reliable mobile connectivity experience wherever they are,” commented Lutz Schüler, CEO of Virgin Media (O2 VMO2). “This is an investment for the future, building on the £2 million we already spend each day on our mobile network, with this high frequency spectrum perfectly suited to delivering incredible connectivity in crowded places like the O2 arena and other stadiums, train stations and airports. We’ve already broken the speed barrier on our network through tests of these airwaves, and we’ll be fired up and ready to deploy our new spectrum at the right moment so our customers can benefit as soon as possible.”

VMO2 has already carried out a successful real-world 5G Standalone test using a trial licence for mmWave spectrum which saw speeds of 4Gbps on a single device – a new speed record for O2.  While there are currently limited mobile handsets live in the UK market, VMO2 says it will be ready to utilise this spectrum as soon as these devices become mainstream in the UK. O2 also has the largest deployment of small cells in the UK, reaching more than 2,000 sites, which are ideally suited to make use of mmWave spectrum.

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Categories: 5G, Articles, Business, MNO, Mobile, Policy, Regulation, Spectrum

Tags: EE, mmWave, O2, Ofcom, spectrum, vodafonethree