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Mobile operator repeats call to tackle BT’s ‘dominant’ spectrum position; says site rental, backhaul is too expensive.
3UK has warned that a lack of spectrum and the cost of renting sites and transmission networks are hampering its efforts to meet capacity demand.
At a panel session during Connected Britain on Wednesday, 3UK’s director of network strategy Phil Sheppard repeated CEO Dave Dyson’s call to address the country’s spectrum imbalance.
"42% [of the U.K.’s mobile spectrum] is currently owned by BT," he said. "In a four-player market…it means they have a dominant position in terms of speed and capacity."
Earlier this month, 3UK chief Dave Dyson said in a Financial Times report that regulator Ofcom needs to make some "pro-competition choices" in the way it designs future spectrum auctions.
The watchdog plans to auction 40 MHz of spectrum in the 2.3 GHz band and 150 MHz in the 3.4 GHz band later this year. It has set a reserve price of £70 million (€97 million) for the airwaves.
"We have the most asymmetric spectrum holding in Europe. Something needs to be done to address that," Sheppard said.
As operators pin their hopes for addressing demand on cell densification and higher frequency bands, issues such like site acquisition and backhaul connectivity become critical.
Sheppard argues that the current cost per site is too high, which means the business case for rolling out new cells is not there. He said transmission costs are also too expensive; "we need to go more towards a dark fibre model."
The government hopes to tackle at least part of the problem by overhauling the electronic communications code. The legislation, included under the Digital Economy Bill aims to streamline the process of deploying new sites.
Meanwhile, under Ofcom’s new leased line regulations, proposed in March and confirmed in April, BT is required to launch a dark fibre product from 1 October 2017.
For Sheppard, the changes cannot come soon enough.
"The current price of deploying 10,000 small cells would bankrupt a company," he claimed.
