Spectrum, mobile & wireless update March 2016

Lots of updates from Ofcom this month:

• A consultation on proposals to make 700MHz spectrum available “no later than Q2 2020”, 18 months earlier than planned. The consultation also proposes that the 25MHz in the middle of the 700MHz band, the ‘centre gap’, should be used for mobile data. The consultation was accompanied by a statement on an updated Code of Practice on the management of transitional issues during the preparation for clearance of 700MHz spectrum, and a further call for input on managing the effects of 700MHz clearance on programme making and special events (PMSE) stakeholders and digital terrestrial TV (DTT) viewers.
• A statement on the use of consumer installed mobile repeaters to improve mobile coverage where required. Ofcom anticipates that these devices could play an important role in helping improve coverage inside buildings, vehicles, trains and in more remote rural locations.
• A statement confirming that VHF spectrum within the 55-68MHz, 70.5-71.5MHz and 80.0-81.5MHz bands can be used for Internet of Things (IoT) services and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) applications, as part of Ofcom’s work to encourage UK IoT investment and innovation.
• A consultation on Ofcom’s Space Spectrum Strategy, covering the use of spectrum by the satellite and space science (including earth observation) sectors. The consultation also includes the use of satellites to deliver broadband in hard to reach rural areas. Ofcom does not believe that spectrum availability is likely to be a barrier to the growth of satellite broadband; its analysis indicates that the current spectrum allocations could deliver enough capacity by 2020 to offer 10 Mbit/s satellite broadband to 0.7% of UK premises. More capacity could be available in the future, for example to support 20 Mbit/s broadband, if additional satellites were deployed.
• A consultation setting out new proposals to enable mobile customers to change provider more quickly and easily. Ofcom's preferred option is to place responsibility for the switch, including the transfer of a customer's mobile phone number, entirely in the hands of their new provider.
• An updated mobile and broadband checker, including the latest information on mobile coverage and statistics on the availability and quality of home and office broadband by postcode. This was accompanied by a new report, Smartphone Cities, providing information on mobile network performance across five UK cities: Cardiff, Edinburgh, Liverpool, London and Norwich. These five were chosen by Ofcom because all four mobile network operators (EE, O2, Three and Vodafone) had rolled out 4G networks in each at the time of its testing (November – December 2015). 4G services provided faster download speeds than 3G services consistently and across all networks. Across all five cities and all operators, the average download speed when using a 4G network was 17Mbit/s compared to 6Mbit/s when using 3G technology.

Other spectrum, mobile & wireless updates this month:

• Network World (also see this infographic) reported on complaints made to the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regarding the blocking of Wi-Fi hotspots, despite the Commission’s ban on such blocking.
• ISP Review reported a preliminary opinion by the European Court of Justice that operators of free open public WiFi networks cannot be held liable for any copyright infringements committed on their networks.
• ISP Review also reported on new data from RootMetrics showing the top 16 UK cities for 2G, 3G and 4G mobile network performance.
• Three announced a 1100% increase in average data usage in five years, with average data usage per customer growing to 5GB from 3.3GB at the end of 2014 and 500MB at the end of 2010.
• 5G research: ISP Review reported on the SELFNET project taking place at the University of West of Scotland (UWS) investigating how to make future 5G networks “self-healing” to boost performance, protect against DDoS attacks and recover faster from outages. LightWave reported on project investigating the use of WDM-PON technology for mobile backhaul and mobile fronthaul. Both projects are part of the EU Horizon 2020 5G Infrastructure Public Private Partnership (5G-PPP).