Written by Mary Lennighan
Ofcom is keen to foster a culture of sharing in the UK telecoms market and as such has opened a consultation into proposed new spectrum sharing rules.
Buoyed by the success of its existing shared access framework, the UK regulator is seeking to introduce greater flexibility into the management of shared spectrum, thereby making more spectrum available, particularly in the “busiest” 3.8 GHz-4.2 GHz band, it says.
We’ve heard a lot over the years about spectrum being a finite resource, the lifeblood of the mobile industry, and so on, so it’s not surprising that Ofcom – and its peers elsewhere in the world – are anxious to develop different methods of sharing.
Ofcom reminds us that it introduced its shared access framework in 2019 and interest has been strong.
“We’ve issued more than 1,500 licences for this form of spectrum access and we expect that demand will continue to grow as a number of other countries adopt similar approaches,” Ofcom said.
New uses included rolling out 5G cameras to broadcast large events, monitoring and automation of logistics and industrial sites, and 5G-based fixed wireless access. The 3.8 GHz-4.2 GHz band proved most popular, with more than 500 of those 1,500-plus live licences being in that frequency range; the regulator has awarded a total of 2,059 shared access licences in the past four years, but some have been surrendered or revoked.
