4G? Yes, Minister
Posted by CJD on March 13, 2013
Ofcom’s on a roll at the moment, for the third time is as many months it’s doing something I approve of. (I’m sure they’ll be relieved to hear this.)
In the wake of the 4G licensing, they’ve gone out to industry consultation on liberalising the radio spectrum.
(I had a road to Damascus moment a few years ago in a meeting with Ofcom when we went to industry consultation about regulating VoIP in the UK. I was thinking that industry consultation meant asking industry for advice on the best way of doing something. It was pointed out to me in that particular “Yes, Minister” way that all civil servants adopt, that Ofcom does not consult on things that it isn’t intending on doing. In other words, what Ofcom ‘consult’ on, Ofcom will implement unless someone with extremely big guns stop them.)
Anyway, Ofcom are doing this because it…
“…..will meet a long standing objective to liberalise all mobile licences so that there are no regulatory barriers to the deployment of the latest available mobile technology…..”
http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/consultations/variation-900-1800-2100/summary/condoc.pdf
In other words, instead of telling the mobile operators what services they can operate, they allow the operator to choose for itself.
Sometimes regulatory innovations are pretty damn obvious aren’t they?
More info from Tech Crunch here:
