MPs accuse Everything Everywhere over sale of 1800MHz spectrum

MPs have accused Everything Everywhere of standing to gain a whopping £250m in profit from the sale of spectrum holdings it was given by the UK government, of which the UK taxpayer could see nothing.

Tom Watson, MP for West Bromwich, made this point to the firm's deputy chief executive, Richard Moat, at a Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) hearing on mobile spectrum after Ofcom gave the go-ahead for spectrum trading.

The firm has to sell a portion of its 1800MHz spectrum to achieve merger clearance from competition authorities in the European Commission and the UK, which Watson argued would give it a sizable return, even after costs of licensee renewal were factored in.

"If you've been paying £8m per year in licence renewals for the holdings you were given you now have to sell, that's £160m over 20 years, so if you sell for £450m [as has been cited by analysts] you'd make a quarter of a billion pounds in profit," he said.

Watson asked the firm if it felt this was fair and if the UK taxpayer would see any of this money, noting the firm has several major shareholders in Germany and France, but Moat refused to be drawn on this issue in any detail.

He instead argued that as Everything Everywhere was losing a significant portion of its spectrum holding due to the competition requirements, it was most likely to plough the money back into the purchase of new spectrum holdings.

"As we are selling a lot of [our spectrum] we will need to acquire more to replace it and more on top again to meet the needs of our 30 million customers," Moat said.