Airwaves opened up to support wireless revolution
Farmers, factories and business parks are some of the groups that could benefit from a revolution in wireless technology, following a decision by Ofcom today to open up airwaves to enable innovation and support new services.
Ofcom manages the UK’s airwaves – or spectrum – which are crucial to power services such as mobile phones, wireless broadband and connected devices. To help promote wireless innovation across the UK economy, we have today decided to open up airwaves that previously could only be used by certain parties.
Under a new sharing framework, these airwaves will be available for local use by a range of other parties – such as small businesses or pioneering start-up firms. We are making airwaves available in four ‘frequency bands’ on a shared basis:
• the 1800 MHz and 2300 MHz shared spectrum bands, which are currently used for mobile services;
• the 3.8-4.2 GHz band, which supports the latest 5G mobile technology; and
• the 26 GHz band, which has also been identified as one of the main bands for 5G in the future. We have added this band since first proposing our
spectrum sharing approach in December 2018.
We are also allowing different groups to access airwaves licensed to mobile companies, but not being used by them.
A news release is available.
