Mobile phone network providers ordered to meet over broadband access

In an effort to ensure that the plans by the government to provide universal high-speed broadband service to every home in the UK by 2012 the business secretary, Lord Mandelson has ordered a summit meeting between the country’s top five mobile phone networks.

According to a report from a popular British newspaper the purpose of the meeting between the Vodafone, O2, 3, Orange and T-Mobile networks’ chief executive is to ‘bang some heads together.’

With the digital economy bill from the government due in the autumn, this will be the second time Lord Mandelson has had to step in. The disconnection of the broadband services of users who illegally downloaded copyrighted material was also proposed by his department recently.

The implementation of the Digital Britain report that was published earlier in the year by Stephen Carter is something that Lord Mandelson is now taking serious steps to achieve.

To help pay for the deployment of the new next generation broadband network a levy of £6 on all fixed-line telephone connection was proposed in the report and was considered to be one of its key recommendations, although due to the currently economic situation faced by the UK this has now been removed as many felt it would not work.

A greater use of mobile broadband, which for the first time would provide rural and remote areas of the country with broadband services, would be critical in achieving universal broadband according to the report from Lord Carter.

When mobile network providers began operating back in the 1980’s the original operators who were O2 and Vodafone were granted the use of the 900MHz wireless spectrum and achieving universal broadband now hinges on all five mobile network operators agreeing a deal for the sharing of this spectrum.

Source – Telegraph