Mandelson to Consult UK Mobile Networks to Discuss Broadband Speed Boost
Lord Mandelson has called on the chiefs of the five dominant mobile broadband networks operating in the United Kingdom to a meeting with a view to discuss the scopes of a broadband access speed boost in the country, in the backdrop of the government’s Universal Broadband commitment by 2012.
It is believed that this meeting might influence the formulation of the digital economy bill that is due for autumn. The legislation is expected to implement a few of the significant points put forth by Lord Carter, the former communications minister, in his Digital Britain report of June. It is also believed that Mandelson is keen on bringing forth fresh laws against the illegal downloaders of the copyrighted content that also point to penalties such as cutting off their broadband connections.
The current pattern of conciliating the mobile operators hat Mandelson is aspiring to follow, looks much similar to the one proposed by Lord Carter in his Digital Britain report. As a matter of fact, Carter had maintained the view that universal broadband rollout of 2Mbps broadband speed in the country could only be realised with the help of the big five mobile operators of the UK, and he had not only tried to strike a consensus among them, but had even gone to the extent of trying out the way of intimidation.
Mandelson too seems to have realised the need of the big five mobile networks to come into the scene, to fulfill the government’s promise of a 2Mbps broadband connection to all homes in the UK. Here, the problem Mandelson is likely to face is of taming the two previleged operators – O2 and Vodafone – that combinedly own the 900MHz radio spectrum, which was granted to the duo when they started their operation in the early part of the eighties.
Mandelson knows this fact as well as the operators that the 900MHz spectrum is ideal for bridging gaps left by fixed line broadband providers in the rural areas, particularly for the capability of this spectrum to carry signals over long distances. Further, today there may not be many in the country who might not be knowing that the rest three operators do not have this, and a comprehensive mobile broadband covering up of the gaps in the rural regions obviously called for a redistribution of the spectrum between the big five at least.
However, there are also a good number of people who think that Mandelson’s proposed meeting with the CE s of the five mobile operators of the UK – Vodafone, O2, 3 UK, T-Mobile and Orange – was nothing more than a face saver. According to Chuck Doherty of Broadband Suppliers, the people in the UK were likely to explode on Mandelson and the Labour in a quite short time with scathing crticism, over their inexplicably excess enthusiasm shown in the anti-piracy legislation proposal, leaving the profounder requirement of ’2Mbps broadband for all UK homes’ high and dry.
Meanwhile, the views of an insider on the matter that the proposed Mandelson-operators meeting for Tuesday was designed to bang a few heads together, is also ponderable. He cites a probability that any conciliatory measure such as extending the networks’ licences to indefinitely operate 3G services (that would save them billions of pounds) could invoke criticism mainly from the fixed line ISPs on the grounds that this money could be used to fund the rolling out of next generation broadband services.
