Qualcomm to use $16.3M worth of U.K. spectrum for testing

It seems Qualcomm is not willing to give up on the U.K. market for mobile TV.
The MediaFLO proponent will pay $16.3 million for 40 MHz of L-Band spectrum in the United Kingdom that the company said it will use for research and development as it tries to prove MediaFLO as a technology that can compete with DVB-H, which has gained a significant foothold throughout Europe.
Indeed, DVB-H got a big boost earlier this year when the European Commission formally adopted DVB-H technology as the standard for mobile television throughout the union’s 27 member states. European countries are required to encourage the use of DVB-H as the single listed standard; however it’s not a mandated standard. Therefore, competitors like Qualcomm are not precluded from entering the market.
Analysts have routinely said DVB-H doesn’t penetrate as far as MediaFLO, while DVB-SH, a variant of the former that relies on satellite delivery, outperforms both.
Qualcomm has been working to bring MediaFLO into the U.K. market since 2006, when it ran MediaFLO trials with British Sky Broadcasting Ltd.
Still, Qualcomm isn’t putting the same effort into the U.K. market as it has in the United States. The company is spending around $800 million to build its own MediaFLO network here, and Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility are using the network.
Qualcomm said any U.K. buildouts would be completed through partnerships.
“Acquiring this spectrum will enable us to develop, test and explore a variety of innovative wireless services and technologies that will benefit European consumers and the wireless industry as a whole,” said Andrew Gilbert, executive VP at the company.
Qualcomm’s U.K. L-Band spectrum license covers the entire country. In the United States, Qualcomm owns spectrum covering 130 million people.
Qualcomm showed up on a list of U.K. bidders last month and said at the time it had no plans to build out a network of its own.