Price tag of £1bn on military airwaves in the UK

The UK Treasury stands to raise as much as £1 billion by selling Ministry of Defence airwaves currently reserved for military purposes, according to industry analysts.

The MoD will reveal plans to sell part of its spectrum holdings in 2014, as part of a longer-term government strategy to auction unused public sector airwaves to support next generation 4G mobile networks. The MoD controls about three quarters of all publicly-held spectrum and one third of all spectrum below 15GHz, which it uses for secure communications, navigation as well as functions such as radar.