Why there will never be another GSM
Ofcom squares up to EU over spectrum carve-up — Comment Ofcom is changing the way spectrum is licensed in the UK to remove usage restrictions, but the EU is calling for region-wide harmonisation of use to create economies of scale.
Context & Ripple Effects
This piece lands at the sharp end of a fight Ofcom opened in September 2007, when it proposed freeing the old mobile spectrum — loosening restrictions on bands reserved for second-generation phones and reclaiming over a third of the airwaves Vodafone and O2 have held for 22 years to auction them to new entrants. The Register's argument is that this liberalised, use-agnostic licensing model breaks with the GSM era, when one harmonised European standard created continent-wide economies of scale.
The EU's counter-position — region-wide harmonisation of spectrum use — puts Brussels directly against Ofcom's deregulatory instinct, and the stakes are visible in who is waiting at the door: Google has already signalled plans to enter the UK mobile and broadband market, an entry that only makes sense if spectrum can be bought without inheriting a mandated technology.
First-order effects
- Vodafone and O2 face losing more than a third of the 900MHz-class spectrum they have operated for 22 years to an open auction, while new entrants gain a realistic path into UK mobile for the first time since GSM launched.
- Ofcom's removal of usage restrictions means licence holders can repurpose their holdings for any service, immediately changing what existing spectrum is worth.
Second-order effects
- Google's stated plan to move into UK mobile and broadband becomes materially cheaper to execute under liberalised licences, pressuring incumbent operators who assumed the GSM-era barriers would hold.
- The EU's harmonisation push forces other member-state regulators to choose sides: follow Ofcom's auction-and-liberalise model or hold the line on common-use bands, splitting the bloc's regulatory practice.
Third-order effects
- If the UK model spreads, spectrum policy shifts from designating technologies (the mechanism that produced GSM) to auctioning flexible capacity, making future pan-European standards harder to mandate and shifting power from standards bodies to whoever wins each national auction.
- A durable UK-EU split over spectrum doctrine would leave equipment makers and operators serving two regulatory regimes in one market, eroding the scale economies that harmonisation was designed to protect.
The trend: Spectrum regulation is moving from technology-mandating harmonisation toward flexible, auctioned licences, with Ofcom leading and the EU defending the single-standard model that built GSM.