Those who have been jealous of the 4G networks popping up all over the United States and soon to move to Canada Central America can finally have something to be proud of, at least until the world starts talking about 5G. Thanks to Ofcom who is set to auction off chunks of its network spectrum to phone carriers in 2012, it looks like 4G will be coming to the UK a lot sooner than expected, albeit not sooner than most people would want it to be.
The different parts of the proposed spectrum that is supposed to be auctioned off would bring the capacity to fill the spectrum with fourth generation data connections that have figurative speeds of up to 100Mbps although it should be noted that actual speeds will be far less than that.
Ofcom is also stipulating that whichever company successfully acquires the spectrum will be required to provide 95% of the British population with high speed broadband data connections by the end of 2017. This would facilitate in the improving of data connections in part of the country where data connections are not that strong.
Thanks to the switch from analog to digital TV, much of the bandwidth has been freed up which fits within the 800MHz spectrum. The parts of the spectrum which are up for grabs are over 80% more then what was available during 2000.
Just like in the United States, the two competing technologies for 4G, both WiMAX and LTE are not yet agreed on and it is not sure what carriers will ultimately decide on. Furthermore, the International Telecommunication Union’s Radiocommunication Sector has ruled that neither LTE nor WiMAX is sufficiently advanced to be truly considered a 4G technology. But that has not stopped carriers such as Verizon and Sprint from calling their respective LTE and WiMAX networks 4G and we highly doubt that will stop any in the UK from doing so as well, no matter what the International Telecommunication Union’s Radiocommunication Sector has to say on the matter.
