The story of spectrum allocation has witnessed yet another turn of events. T-Mobile has decided to back out from its joint attempt with O2 at postponing the auction of the 2.6GHz range.

This portion of the spectrum is critical for 4G services like LTE, and Ofcom is keen to sell it off. Most of the major industry players are however not happy with this decision. They feel that it is not possible to put a price on the 2.6GHz range when other ranges of the spectrum like 900MHz, which is used for 3G internet services, have not been allocated.

To resolve the issue, a lawsuit was filed against Ofcom by O2 and T-Mobile last year. This not only led the auction to be stalled, but also prevented the deployment of Wimax, LTE’s rival technology in the 2.6GHz range, a situation favourable for those mobile providers who are supporting LTE.

Now with T-Mobile having pulled out of the legal tussle for unknown reasons, O2 is the only barrier in the way of Ofcom holding the auction. Ofcom, on the other hand, has reiterated that the decisions regarding the 2.6GHz and 900MHz ranges are entirely separate, and has made it clear that it is preparing to hold the auction later this year.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 at 6:32 am and is filed under Consumers Den, Technology Resources, Telecommunication + More. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.