Plenty has been written about Everything Everywhere selling 30MHz of 1,800Mhz spectrum to the UK's smallest operator 3 (including this , which is really good). Much of the aforementioned text is a bit sensationalist or misinformed, so I thought I'd summarise what's gone on and also attempt to answer the one thing that hasn't been covered: the price. In summary: Everything Everywhere (the result of the merger between Orange and T-Mobile in the UK, for those of you who haven't been keeping up :) ) were forced by the EU to sell a proportion of their collected spectrum in order that the market remained "fair" The spectrum is at 1,800MHz ("1800") and was originally used for carrying 2G mobile signals Although that frequency can be used for LTE, it isn't often. The more common bands are 800 and 2600, although others - including 2100 and 1800 - are sometimes used In any case, the spectrum won't be fully released to 3 until September 2015,...
Thoughts on strategy in a Digital Economy