Ofcom signals boost for UK mobile broadband

Mobile data capacity in Britain will grow more than 25 times by 2030 under plans by Ofcom to free spectrum to meet the growing demands for internet on the move.

The rapid adoption of smartphones and tablets has raised fears that the UK’s mobile bandwidth will not be able to cope with the data demanded by applications such as video and social media. Ofcom has moved to free additional spectrum to meet this “capacity crunch”, but has identified two further bandwidths that could be used for mobile broadband. The government has begun assessing the possibility of reorganizing the 2.7GHz radar band to release up to 100MHz of spectrum for other uses, while additional spectrum in the 3.6GHz band used for satellite links is another potential area for mobile use. Mobile services should be able to share this band by coordinating with existing satellite users, Ofcom said. Freeing spectrum is among a number of proposals in a consultation to boost mobile capacity to meet the data demand.

(Nov 21)