Mobile Broadband Could Fulfil Broadband USO

Mobile broadband is capable of fulfilling the government’s 2Mbps broadband universal service obligation according to Phil Sheppard, the Director of Technical Solutions at 3 UK.

Sheppard was speaking at the government’s Broadband for All eForum seminar where discussions were taking place on how best to implement the government’s broadband for all pledge in its Digital Britain report.

He said, “Mobile Broadband tends to be capable and commercially capable of providing the 2Mbps broadband universal service commitment and is an extremely efficient way of doing it”.

He continued, “It is very cost effective, it actually doesn’t need government funding, what it needs is access to spectrum, that’s the key”.

Access to the spectrum is an opinion held by a number of other UK mobile broadband providers.

It concerns Ofcom’s attempts to persuade Voadone and O2, the owners of the 2G (900Mhz) band to release it to operators like 3 who could convert the band to 3G and extend their mobile broadband coverage considerably.

This would then allow areas of the UK with no fixed line access to the Internet to receive mobile broadband access instead.