4G auctions should include rural coverage requirements

Forthcoming auctions of the 800MHz spectrum holding should include provisions that require mobile operators to use a portion of any spectrum they buy for mobile broadband rural coverage in order to close the digital divide, according to experts.

Brian Poterill, director of telecoms at PwC, said he felt it was vital the auctions included this requirement to ensure widespread broadband coverage, noting that in other nations this had been successfully implemented.

"The 800MHz frequency auctions should have some rural broadband mechanisms in there. We've been shown the way by Sweden where one chunk of the frequency had an innovative requirement to invest in rural area," he said.

"A lot of superfast broadband will be delivered by the likes of BT but the use of spectrum is going to be the only way to get broadband to many rural areas in the foreseeable future."

Julian McCougan, the head of public policy at Arqiva, agreed this was vital as mobile operators would not have any desire to rollout in rural areas themselves because there would be no economic reason to do so.

"There are no coverage obligations and no one believes the market will solve the issue of rural broadband coverage. No one will lease or sell licences to cover rural areas when they want to cover iPhone users on Oxford Street," he said.

"In many areas customers pay for broadband but only get speeds of 500Kbit/s or are excluded altogether, so wireless has a key role to play, with LTE services that can be deployed on 800MHz key to that."

The head of UK spectrum policy at the Department for Media, Culture and Sport (DCMS), Mark Swarbrick, said the government had no plans to enforce rural mobile rollouts, but noted that a forthcoming Ofcom consultation could address this.

"We will have to wait and see what Ofcom says [in the forthcoming consultation], but there's not too long to wait for that and for all I know there may be some issue around coverage they come forward with," he said.

"The government is committed to delivering broadband through the UK and clearly mobile will form a part of that so we'll wait to see how that fits in with Ofcom's consultation."

The government has committed to providing broadband connection of 2Mbit/s to all citizens by 2015, setting aside £530m to facilitate its deployment too.