Oh well our wonderful country might not have 4G mobile broadband till 2015!

See here

Typical!

ps

Can someone tell me what the H symbol means on my phone as i have just moved from t-mobile over to giffgaff and noticed the speed of the internet is more faster.

By then over places could have 5G LOL

I blame Ofcom

H is HSPA i think... It would have been fast on T-Mobile but unfortunately they limit the speed of all their customers

Blame O2 (mainly) and Vodafone, those are the ones that caused the delay.

O2 has a cheek.. if they were to switch off most of their 2G they would have massive amount of 900 spectrum for 4G. Pot kettle black.. They currently have competitive advantage with 3G on 900 as well as being able to use 2100... i think I've seen a few 1800 UTMS O2 sites also. Pot Kettle Black..

I doubt it, no devices are currently on the market that support UMTS @1800 as far as I'm aware. It came up in discussion in another thread recently and I looked into it at that time out of curiosity. Only Orange has 1800 anyway I thought.

Why are we always so behind in this country?

Most of the Western world had 100MB home broadband for years, but it only started to become widely available here a year or so ago.

Now the rest of the world is on the cusp of getting LTE, we're still umming and ahhing about getting 4G! Pathetic!

A lot of places have had LTE for a while, the USA, Canada, in Asia, places in Europe and even Africa has some LTE!

Ofcom has a lot to answer for letting these giant corporations derail next gen technology which would boost the UK economy, lead to more services on the go, faster rural broadband etc.

Ofcom messed up DAB badly, they mishandled it so much. They are now doing the same thing with 4G.

In case people don't know what they did with DAB, they issues the 'one and only' commercial DAB multiplex and got bidder for it. They then later decided another national commercial multiplex was to be announced and awarded it to Channel 4, this lead to the original multiplex dropping in value significantly and lead to the company that owned it being devalued overnight, Channel 4 then decided they weren't interested in the multiplex and after winning the licence never launched it. Ofcom did nothing.

Now Ofcom have allowed O2 and Vodafone to re-use GSM900 for 3G services 'for free' when they were given 900Mhz for cheap anyway, and in addition to that Ofcom are letting O2 bully them into delaying 4G auctions.

I really hope O2 get a kicking for their greed and bully boy tactics because they bloody deserve it and Ofcom have been completely useless as usual.

Fully behind O2 and their argument, the current setup for 4G does amount to state aid for 3

It's like the government giving land to Morrisons to build supermarkets next door tesco.

And it's a myth that the other networks don pay for their 2g spectrum, the VF CEO told the parliamentary committee that VF pay over £300m a year for their spectrum (think that number is right) more than any other network

Not those 900 Mhz ones though, that's the argument. The spectrum they were given very cheaply they are now allowed to use for 3G, whist the 2100Mhz spectrum cost £22 billion.

http://www.publications.parliament.u...258/125806.htm

The guaranteed spectrum is about levelling out the playing field. Ofcom took a decision which gave a massive advantage to some players, what they are doing is levelling out the situation by giving a concession to the people effected by the decision to re-farm old cheap spectrum. They can't have it both ways.

We'll see what the legal action brings I guess.

Whatever they are paying is inconsequential though for me, Three knew the market they decided to move into, they would have completed models including the potential of reframing spectrum by existing networks and still went ahead with an investment in this country.

So I'm sorry but I am not prepared to accept they should get state aid n any 4g auction.

Oh and OFCOM had no choice, they were legally bound to follow the EU directive to refarm spectrum.

You could class letting O2 use spectrum they get for peanuts for 3G, whilst charging other operators 22Bn state aid could you not?

No, they pay a fair amount to the rest of the market who were involved in those auctions. If you decide to join that market at a later date you join knowing the situation, and as mentioned three would have modelled this scenario and still decided to come to the uk.

Yes but 3G required 2100Mhz, it was never on the cards to allow re-use of cheap spectrum for 3G services, by making that decision they completely changed the ball game, out of fairness they plan to make up for that and re-balance the market, or at least did until O2 kick up a fuss and delayed 4G for the whole country.

FYI these were the 2100Mhz spectrum costs:

Hutchison 3G UK Limited (£4,385 million)
Vodafone Limted (£5,964 million)
BT (3G) Limited (O2) (£4,030 million)
One2One Personal Communications Limited (T-Mobile) (£4,004 million)
Orange 3G Limited (£4,095 million)

4 Billion a piece and the 900Mhz as I said only costs £65 million per year.

The 900 were awarded in the 80's £65m was huge then, what are you advocating, that companies should retrospectively be charged for investments made in the past.

In which case it's time to get tesco to pay up for the cheap land the purchased for any store 20yrs old, or how about the young today be given free houses because the olde generations only paid. Few k for a house now worth hundreds of k

What a silly comparison this is a licence, not property. Putting 65 Million into an inflation calculator from the 1980s still only gives you 143 Million, not 4 Billion.

They allowed re-use of the spectrum and allowed old operators to re-use their cheap spectrum for 3G, Ofcom were going to guarantee Three a place in 4G as compensation for the losses of giving O2 and Vodafone something worth 4 Billion pounds for FREE, whilst they had to pay for their 3G licences.

Now of course O2 have the 900Mhz they are sueing Ofcom saying it's unfair. What a shame Ofcom can't take back the permission to use 900Mhz for 3G services.

If you want to talk about state handouts you should look at Ofcom allowing the re-purposing of old licences for pennies to be used for technologies they were never licensed for.

Let's also not forget that OFCOM have already stated that the 900 spectrum fees will be restated at the time of the 4 g auction so will no longer be 65m.

So your price argument is even weaker.

Easy to see why they want to delay it though isn't it

I just hope it comes back to bite them.

Its still crazy money. Plus they had to spend money on building network infrastructure. Hence 3G coverage is poor and if you go outside big towns or city limits its pretty much non existent.

Its taken the mobile operators almost 8 years to build their 3G networks and the coverage is piss poor! Now think how long 4G will take.....

Another point on your cost argument, Vodafone paid more than anyone for their license.

I remember watching the bid process back in the day, was amazing seeing these numbers just growing and growing.

The 4g auction will get nowhere near the 3G one

http://bit.ly/sf1EQD

why did voda pay so much?

They purchased the best spectrum.

It makes you think these operators can build better networks but holding back keeps them in control in the long term!

Take for instance mobile broadband especially if you want to become and MVNO you can purchase per GB data for around 8p per GB and some providers sell you 500mb for £5 per month huge profit margins.