Statement on final regulations published 4 November 2020
We are preparing to award spectrum licences in the 700 MHz and 3.6-3.8 GHz bands. The spectrum will enable the industry to provide services with greater capacity and wider coverage, and to support new wireless technologies, including 5G – the latest generation of mobile services.
On 13 March 2020, we published a statement setting out our decisions for the award of spectrum in the 700 MHz and 3.6-3.8 GHz frequency bands. At the same time, we published a final draft of the regulations which would implement our decisions. We have now made the regulations which implement those decisions.
We will now proceed with our preparations to hold the auction as soon as it is reasonably practicable to do so in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. We will work with all interested bidders to ensure the auction can proceed in a secure and safe way. In light of the practical steps that we need to take in this regard, we are aiming for a formal start to the auction process in late November with a view to starting bidding in mid-January 2021.
Main documents
Supporting documents
Alongside our consultation, we published a document which provides an overview of all the steps we are taking to improve mobile coverage (PDF, 180.1 KB).
In our statement of 13 March 2020 we made reference to modelling derived from use of a “single user throughput” model (the “SUT Model”). A stakeholder has raised concerns that it did not have the opportunity to comment on our reference to the SUT Model in advance of publication of our statement.
We have today published an update note, which sets out the context for our use of the SUT Model. We invite any comments on the matters set out in this update and further consultation, by 12 June 2020. We will review the position set out in the 13 March statement in light of any comments we receive and will publish our conclusions.
On 11 June 2019, we published a consultation with revised proposals to facilitate defragmentation of the 3.4-3.8 GHz band through the 700 MHz and 3.6-3.8 GHz award. This consultation closes on 10 July.
A number of footnotes were missing on page 172 of the consultation document. We have updated the document to include these.
Ofcom has received a request from a stakeholder regarding the treatment of the around 300 new sites that the Home Office is intending to build to improve coverage in remote areas (the “EAS sites”). In particular, we have been asked to clarify whether the coverage provided by these sites would count towards compliance with the requirement to provide good quality service outdoors for at least 140,000 premises to which the obligated operator currently does not provide good coverage that we proposed in our December 2018 consultation (the “premises requirement”).
For the avoidance of doubt, we are minded to exclude the coverage provided by the EAS sites within our assessment of compliance with any of the requirements that would form part of the proposed coverage obligations, including the premises requirements. As explained in our December 2018 consultation (PDF, 2.7 MB) (paragraphs 4.60-4.61 and 4.111-4.115), this is because of the uncertainty related to these sites and their relatively remote location. As set out in our January 2019 consultation (PDF, 761.6 KB) (paragraph A5.33) we will ask operators to identify any coverage provided by these sites so that they can be excluded from their coverage predictions for geographic coverage, and (as set out at paragraph A5.38) we will use these predictions to inform our compliance assessment with the premises requirement.
The proposals set out in our December 2018 consultation and our January 2019 consultation shall be read in accordance with this.
Main documents
Supporting documents
Responses
Contact information
Spectrum Group
Ofcom
Riverside House
2A Southwark Bridge Road
London SE1 9HA