UK to lag behind on LTE wireless networks

Qualcomm is pushing Long Term Evolution (LTE) as the logical successor to today's 3G mobile networks, but UK customers should not expect to see the technology deployed anytime soon.

The company said at its IQ 2010 conference in London on Wednesday that it is working with 110 mobile operators worldwide that are committed to a launch or trial of LTE, 38 of which are in Europe.

However, the UK was conspicuously absent from the charts shown by Qualcomm, and for good reason: the spectrum is simply not available here at the moment. There is also a tangled web of regulations and disagreements between the operators that is likely to hold things up.

The good news is that 3G networks are continuing to improve. HSPA+ technology is expected to meet the need for higher speeds with data rates up to 42Mbit/s and possibly higher in the future, the company said.

LTE should strictly be seen as being on a parallel development path to 3G/HSPA, according to Qualcomm. The technology holds the promise of download speeds of 73Mbit/s to 150Mbit/s, with an upgrade path to LTE Advanced potentially reaching 1Gbit/s.

The problem with the UK, according to Ben Timmons, Qualcomm's senior director for business development in Europe, is that the desirable parts of the wireless spectrum are already allocated.

"You need to have enough bandwidth. LTE will have less performance than 3G unless the necessary bandwidth is available," he said.

The 2.6GHz band is potentially up for auction with licences for wireless services. If this happens soon "we could have LTE in the UK in 2011", Timmons said, but this frequency range is not suited for wide coverage, and would result in LTE deployment being restricted to 'hot spots' in high-density urban areas.

Lower frequency bands will be required for the kind of high coverage that mobile phone users in the UK have come to expect, Timmons explained, but these are already allocated to GSM services.

"European operators are interested in reusing the 1,800MHz or 900MHz GSM bands, but will they be allowed to do that?" he said.

There are additional problems if this is allowed, because Vodafone and BT Cellnet (now O2) currently hold the entire 900MHz band.

Regulations do not permit them to deploy next-generation wireless services in this band, but if Ofcom changes this situation, the other UK operators will want a slice of the 900MHz band and are likely to take legal action over it, leading to lengthy delays.

Another alternative is the 800MHz band, which is being freed up by the switch from analogue to digital television, but this is not due to be completed until 2014.

Overall, the picture is that LTE network deployment is unlikely to happen in the UK for many years. However, there is still plenty of scope for expansion in 3G networks, according to Timmons.

Developments such as dual-carrier HSPA, where two frequency bands are combined to provide double the bandwidth, may eventually allow speeds of up to 100Mbit/s by the time the UK is ready to roll out LTE.