Ofcom published its statement on 11 June 2026 confirming it will auction the upper block of the 1.4 GHz band — 1492 to 1517 MHz, 25 MHz in total — for 4G and 5G mobile use. The format is deliberately unglamorous: a sealed-bid, single-round auction with a second-price rule, where the winner pays what the second-highest bidder offered rather than its own bid. Ofcom expects to consult on the draft Auction Regulations in summer 2026 and to hold the auction itself in the first half of 2027.
This is not prime real estate. The block is supplementary downlink (SDL) spectrum — usable only for base-station-to-handset traffic, not the reverse — which Ofcom itself frames as best suited to filling in patchy coverage indoors and in rural areas rather than powering headline 5G speeds. That modesty shows up in the process: no competition measures, no spectrum set-aside, and, according to Ofcom's own published assessment, no spectrum cap on the award.
The case against a hands-off design
It's worth taking the competition worry seriously before dismissing it. The lower 40 MHz of the same 1.4 GHz band is already licensed to VodafoneThree and Virgin Media O2, meaning BT/EE currently holds none of it. Since the completion of the Vodafone–Three merger, the UK mobile market has gone from four national network groups to three, and any additional spectrum that lands next to an operator's existing holdings is worth more to that operator than to a rival starting from zero — because it can be aggregated onto existing radios rather than requiring new kit. Virgin Media O2 raised exactly this point in its response to Ofcom's consultation, arguing that an uncapped, no-set-aside design risks letting Vodafone deepen its position in adjacent mid-band spectrum rather than levelling the field between all three operators. That is a legitimate structural concern, not a negotiating tactic — spectrum adjacency effects are well documented in prior UK and EU awards.
Ofcom's counter, laid out in its statement, is that the block is too small and too functionally narrow to move the competitive needle: 25 MHz of downlink-only capacity, split against a national market, is unlikely to let any single operator lock out rivals from serving customers. That's a reasonable judgment call, and the sealed-bid, second-price mechanic is itself pro-competitive in a narrow sense — it minimizes the incentive for gamesmanship and reduces legal and administrative overhead for what is, in cash terms, a modest award. Regulators do not need to run a full competition inquiry over every spectrum sliver; proportionality has to mean something. But Ofcom should be transparent that VMO2's adjacency argument wasn't refuted so much as outweighed, and it should watch actual deployment patterns after the auction rather than treating "unlikely to harm competition" as a closed question.
Satellite safety versus permanent caution
The more interesting regulatory design choice concerns Inmarsat. The band immediately above 1517 MHz carries mobile satellite services used for maritime distress and safety communications and for aircraft near airports — genuinely safety-of-life infrastructure, not a commercial nicety. Ofcom's own consultation materials confirm the award includes power-flux-density limits and coordination zones around ports and airports specifically to reduce the risk of mobile transmissions blocking Inmarsat satellite receivers. Given that failure mode — a ship losing a distress channel, or an aircraft losing a safety link near a runway — a cautious, engineered-in mitigation approach is the right call, and Ofcom deserves credit for building it into the licence from day one rather than litigating interference complaints after the fact.
What's less obviously right is locking the relaxation of those limits to fixed future calendar dates rather than triggers tied to verified receiver upgrades. Satellite terminal replacement cycles are not static: shipping and aviation operators can and do upgrade equipment faster than regulators assume, especially once a spectrum reallocation creates commercial pressure to modernize. A calendar-based sunset, set years in advance, risks either being too conservative — protecting equipment that's already been replaced — or, if underestimated, needing a politically awkward reopening. Evidence-based review clauses cost little to include and would let both mobile operators and Inmarsat plan around actual conditions rather than a fixed date picked at the point of maximum uncertainty.
Why the extra capacity matters
The backdrop makes the case for releasing this spectrum at all fairly strong. Government figures published on the Shared Rural Network programme show more than 95% of UK landmass now within range of a 4G signal, a target the programme hit roughly a year ahead of schedule. But landmass coverage understates the real problem: indoor and in-building signal, especially in older housing stock and dense urban cores, remains patchy in ways headline coverage statistics don't capture. Downlink-only capacity spectrum like the 1.4 GHz block is precisely the tool for that gap — it adds one-way bandwidth exactly where consumer experience actually breaks down, without requiring the far more expensive and contentious process of clearing paired spectrum.
A £5m-reserve, no-drama sealed-bid auction for a technically narrow, downlink-only block is the sort of unglamorous regulatory housekeeping that deserves to happen more, not less, in UK spectrum policy — provided Ofcom follows through on monitoring the competition effects it judged unlikely, and revisits the Inmarsat sunset dates against real evidence rather than the calendar.