UK Election delays spectrum auction again

The Government managed to push through the controversial Digital Economy Bill, but in doing so failed to make time for things such as spectrum liberalisation and these will now have to wait until the next Government is in power.


This means that the plans to auction the 2.6GHz (2600MHz) band are still on hold until at least mid 2011 (or later) as well the prized 800MHz band. There is also no decision with respect to GSM refarming (O2 and Vodafone have spectrum in 900MHz and Orange and T-Mobile in 1.8GHz). The situation is already muddied by the merge of T-Mobile and Orange who as a single company have too much spectrum (as per the original licenses).

It's likely that T-Mobile/Orange will have to relinquish some of their 1.8GHz spectrum and maybe some of their 2.5GHz spectrum, but they will also fight to get hold of some of the 900HMz spectrum (which has much better transmission characteristics than 1.8GHz).

As there is no Government at all, the above decisions are all on hold, though T-Mobile/Orange are now in breach of their license conditions, there's nothing that can be done until the next Government is elected and Ofcom can then propose changes in the law (i.e. currently the GSM bands are ONLY allowed to be used for GSM services and not 3G services) which will then be enacted into law by the use of Standard Instruments.

The UK was way ahead of the market when it first proposed auctioning the 2.6GHz spectrum (2007/2008) but now even Germany has sorted it's issues and has licensed the band.

TalkTalk talks the talk

Andrew Heaney, Director of Strategy and Regulation of TalkTalk has written a blog post stating: -

* Unless we are served with a court order we will never surrender a customer’s details to rightsholders. We are the only major ISP to have taken this stance and we will maintain it.

* If we are instructed to disconnect an account due to alleged copyright infringement we will refuse to do so and tell the rightsholders we’ll see them in court.

Only 5% of MPs actually turned up for the brief debate in the House yesterday and the other important parts of the stages will now end up in the wash-up process.

TalkTalk have been very vocal against various parts of the Digital Economy Bill and will continue to fight against it and with whichever party is running the country after the general election.

Digital Economy Bill gets FAST approval

Unsurprisingly FAST (Federation Against Software Theft) has welcomed the 'success of the Digital Economy Bill', even though the DEB has attracted criticism from many corners including the music industry itself.

FAST have been criticised in the past for using strong arm tactics on companies to force them to hold audits (from FAST) to ensure they're not using unlicensed software.

The Government has forced the bill through, without proper debate which has angered many people. Allowing the '3 strikes rule' to get through is now imposing punishment without trial and it is too far ranging (i.e. anyone illegally sharing on an open WiFi network can get the WiFi network disconnected). Other issues are that BIS can request to have any domain registry removed (or the infrastructure removed) if the registry doesn't remove content they don't like.

Hopefully someone will take the issues up the the Court of Human Rights and have the bill (or aspects of it) quashed.

The Digital Economy Bill gets FAST approval

The controversial Digital Economy Bill (DEB) which was passed by the House of Lords this week. ISPs and other technology organisations have been saying that further investigation is required and the Bill should not be rushed through Parliament as there are various cost implications which would mean pricing increases for consumers.

BIS estimate that implementing the DEB will cost around £35m and £30m pa JUST in letter writing (to implement the 3 strike rule). The Government is under heavy pressure from licensing authorities and the traditional recording industry.

Now FAST (the Federation Against Software Theft) has joined the foray, but in supporting the DEB saying “Delaying the legislation unnecessarily in the Commons will not help".

The DEB needs further discussions and should not be rapidly passed into law.