GIVEN THE vast sums paid by mobile network operators for 3G licences, the latest auction of UK bandwidth by Ofcom hasn't even caused a small ripple. One of the ten licences even went for a measly £10,000 (just under $20,000).

Hardly surprisingly, the licences which the existing cellular operators won cost the most, with T-Mobile paying out the largest amount (£321,000) with Orange coming a close second (£272,000).

Red-M snuck in at £10,000 for a regional licence, closely followed by Transfinite at £20,000. By contrast, Arquiva – which is into mobile TV – had to pay £260,000 for a national.

The crucial thing here is that Ofcom sold the licences on a technology neutral basis. Which means the winners can do anything they like with the capacity. Better still, they can trade the licences to another company if they end up with something that proves valuable later.

The best bit is that the licences can be utilised to provide high capacity wireless broadband. So those living in areas remote from the nearest telephone exchange stand a chance of being offered a decent broadband connexion.

But MLL Telecom seems to have the right idea as far as the INQ is concerned. It obviously intends to use the spectrum it's gained in the 32 GHz and 40 GHz ranges to provide backhaul for 3G, 4G, LTE and Wimax.

One of the issues that the mobile operators don't seem to have addressed is the speed of the connection to their base stations. They claim the network can potentially supply something like 7.2 Mbit/s to a single HSDPA user, but the base station itself is lucky if it's got 20 Mbit/s to share around. Do the maths.

It's a bit of a puzzle, however, that Rick Hudson, CEO with MLL Telecom, commented that, "The calibre of companies participating was extremely high - reflecting the importance of this spectrum."
Um. How much would Transfinite have had to pay if less importance had been given to the auction? A fiver? µ

L'INQ Ofcom release