Permit on spectrum shake-up questioned

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Two of the UK’s leading mobile operators are rapidly shaking up their use of Britain’s airwaves because of the data demands of bandwidth-hungry smartphone users.

O2 and Vodafone, the second- and third-largest mobile operators by customer numbers, are reallocating radio spectrum previously used for basic phone and text services to smartphone data activities such as web browsing. Everything Everywhere, the largest mobile operator, and 3, the fourth largest, accused regulators of distorting competition in the industry by letting O2 and Vodafone support more technologically advanced services in this fashion. Ofcom, the telecommunications watchdog, gave O2 and Vodafone permission in January to repurpose spectrum used for more basic second-generation phone services for third-generation data downloads.


Permit on spectrum shake-up questioned