It was only around a week ago that the bidders in the latest 5G spectrum auction had been confirmed, and now the first round of the auction is complete – meaning that we know how much spectrum each network has come away with.
There are no big winners – or losers – here though, as EE, VodafoneThree, and O2 have all grabbed the same amounts of spectrum, with all three winning 800MHz of spectrum in the 26GHz band and 1GHz of spectrum in the 40GHz band.
Between them that’s 5.4GHz of extra spectrum that’s now available to the UK’s 5G networks, with each brand paying £13 million for their winnings.
As a reminder, 26GHz and 40GHz spectrum is high frequency, while current 5G networks in the UK rely purely on low and mid-band spectrum ranging from 700MHz to 3.8GHz. Being higher frequency, this newly acquired spectrum delivers weak mobile signals, so it can’t easily cover large areas.
High capacity and high speed
However, there’s a lot of capacity available, which makes it great for busy, relatively compact areas like shopping centres, stadiums, and airports. All this capacity can also deliver greatly increased 5G speeds.
So this new spectrum is an ideal complement to the networks’ existing 5G spectrum holdings, but it probably wouldn’t be used everywhere. Indeed, Ofcom has made the spectrum in this auction available for use in 68 ‘high-density’ areas, such as cities and transport hubs.
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 down the UK.”
While the most important stage of the auction is now complete, the process hasn’t yet finished, as next the networks need to complete the Assignment Stage, where it will be determined which specific frequencies within those bands each network will gain access to.
We’d expect that will be completed soon but even then you might not benefit from this new spectrum immediately, as the companies will need to integrate it into their networks, which may require some upgrades, and as not all consumer hardware even supports these bands yet – so you might need to upgrade your phone too.
