An interesting story from Fierce Wireless – they are reporting that the UK Communications Minister may not force the UK operators to renew their 3G licenses, IF they agree to support the Goverment universal broadband plans.
For those of you wondering that the universal broadband plans are, it is a mandate that everyone in the UK should be able to receive at least 2Mbps… 2Mbps I hear you say? Ain’t that mighty slow! Well, yes is it in my opinion, and I still don’t see how that number was arrived at – particularly since most Mobile Broadband dongles can run nearly twice as fast as that!
Anyway, back to the story. Whilst supporting the universal broadband plans might seem within the scope of Operator mobile broadband rollout anyway, it WILL be expensive for them – because of having to rollout infrastructure to fill in the patches where bandwidth is either low or non-existent… and the $64,000 question (as they say), is: will that be cheaper that what a renewed license would cost? Probably…Maybe….Perhaps…..
[Via: Fierce Wireless]