TechFruit

OFCOM has made a number of proposals to make the 4G spectrum available in the UK as the bandwidth frees up in he 800MHz spectrum with the move to digital television – including extending 4G coverage to cover 98% of the UK and dealing with “not spots”.

Following a consultations between March and May 2011, the telecoms regulator is now proposing to extend UK 4G coverage from 95% to 98% by ensuring that the 4G coverage will not only match existing 2G coverage, but extend that into mobile “not spot” areas of the UK as well. In October, the Government announced plans to invest £150m to boost mobile coverage in those areas with poor or no mobile service – and a significant portion of this money will likely be used to build mobile infrastructure to extend coverage for mobile voice and broadband in areas where there is little commercial incentive to do so.

The report notes the importance of strong competition in the mobile space and the need for the “right mix” of spectrum for each provider to offer their services, but more interesting is their proposal to reserve some spectrum in the 2.6GHz for “innovative” services. They raise the prospect of small scale mobile networks on university campuses, in hospitals, or in commercial offices that operate on short-range frequencies in small areas – but the availability of such spectrum could provide some game changing small scale services from start-ups and is something we whole-heartedly support.

The latest figures from OFCOM are in, and it appears that O2 are once again providing a better customer service than their competitors – with Three and Talk Talk needing to shape up.

In the landline category – BSkyB, BT, and Virgin Media were all rated similarly at 0.19-0.29 complaints per thousand customers, whilst Talk Talk had 0.77 complaints per thousand.

For fixed broadband Virgin Media and BSkyB led the group with just 0.19 complaints per thousand, with Orange and BT getting 0.44 and 0.5 respectably. Although Talk Talk has made great improvements over six months ago, but again it is worst of the pack, receiving 0.55 complaints per thousand.

People in general were much happier with their mobile service than their broadband or landline, but Three picked up the most complaints with 0.14 per thousand. Orange, T-Mobile, Virgin Media, and Vodafone all got 0.06 to 0.07, but O2 were the clear leader with just 0.02. Yes really O2 got .02 complaints per thousand. Congrats to their marketing team for that!

The stats in general show most people relatively content with their mobile phone service, but landline and broadband lagging behind. This could be something to do with people knowing what they’re getting with a mobile contract – but “Up to” speeds on broadband only cause annoyance as no-one ever gets them. Landline dissatisfaction probably comes from the fact that people can compare the poor value services you get from a landline (which you need for broadband) by comparison to mobile services – here’s looking at you BT.

A new slot for a digital terrestrial HD television channel on Freeview has been made available according to Ofcom, which should mean a new HD channel coming to the UK airwaves very soon. Broadcasters are now able to submit applications for the new channel, but with BBC HD, BBC One HD, ITV 1 HD and 4HD already available, this seems like a good time for Channel5 to go HD.

It has taken a while for Ofcom to make this space available, with the delay due to the regulator having to reorganise existing TV services and adding the MPEG-4 and DVB-T2 standards – all needed to make space for spectrum hungry “HD” which needs about 4 times the bandwidth of a standard definition channel.

UK mobile operators TalkTalk (and its subsidiary Tiscali UK) have been fined £3 million by the mobile regulator Ofcom for incorrectly billing thousands of customers (again). The fine comes just a year after Ofcom forced the ISPs to pay £2.5 million back to customers following an investigation after 1,000 complaints from customers.

The firms billed incorrectly billed more than 62,000 customers in the first 11 months of 2010, and after receiving a one month deadline to fix the problem, the company continued to send inaccurate bills to 3,000 customers between December and march this year. The £3 million fine today is on top of the previous £2.5 million refunds and goodwill offerings.

TalkTalk blamed the errors on the problems with integrating Tiscali UK into their business after the acquisition, but claims that the issue is now solved with the company only receiving 12 complaints in the last three months about billing errors – quite an impressive feat with over 4 million subscribers.

[via PC Pro]