Mobile Telecommunications (Hansard, 11 December 1989)

§ Mr. Forth

On 22 June 1989 the then Secretary of State, Lord Young, announced that a consortium led by462W Mercury Communications Ltd. or its parent company, Cable and Wireless, would be offered a licence to operate a mobile telecommunications network within the frequency range of 1.7 to 2.3 GHz, subject to the submission of an acceptable proposal. He also invited applications for one or two further licences to operate such networks. Seven applications were received by the closing date on 14 September.

The proposal from the consortium headed by Mercury, and the other applications have been fully assessed by the Director General of Telecommunications, who has made recommendations to the Secretary of State. We are grateful to the director general and his staff for their careful and thorough assessment.

Following his advice, I can confirm I am offering a licence to Mercury PCN Ltd., a consortium comprising Mercury Communications Ltd. Motorola Ltd. and Telefonica.

I am also offering licences to a consortium consisting of British Aerospace (Space Communications) Ltd., Matra Communication, Millicom UK, Pacific Telesis UK (3) Ltd. and Sony; and a consortium consisting of STC, US West, Thorn EMI and Deutsche Bundespost Telekom, which will operate under the name of Unitel Ltd.

These licences will permit the operators to run personal communications networks (PCNs) in the frequency range 1.7–1.9 They will come into service in the early 1990s. We expect them to compete initially with the services offered by the two existing cellular radio operators, Cellnet and Racal-Vodafone at that time. By the mid to late 1990s, the cost and convenience of equipment may make the use of a PCN a competitive alternative not only to the cellular operators' services but to the fixed telephone network.

The details of operating licences and radio spectrum allocation will now be discussed with the successful licensees. As the announcement of 22 June indicated, they will be able to provide their own radio-based network infrastructure between cells. They will also be permitted to share infrastructure in rural areas if they wish to do so.

The announcement on 22 June specified that the networks should be based on either the GSM standard developed for the pan-European cellular network or the digital European cordless telephone (DECT) technology. In order to allow for full consultation within Europe we have decided not to take a final decision on these two technologies at this stage. This consultation will be undertaken by the successful licensees, with the support of my officials, through the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). However, our objective of a comnon technical standard as a framework for competitive United Kingdom PCN services remain the same, and we expect this to be based upon a European technology or a combination of technologies currently being standardised in Europe.

PCNs will take the development of telecommunications in the United Kingdom a major step forward. They will allow the same telephone to be used at home, at work and on the move. The United Kingdom will be the first country in the world to offer PCN services. The prominent international companies involved in both the successful and unsuccessful applicants attest to the position of this country as a world leader in mobile communications. The United Kingdom companies leading the consortia also make clear the strength of our own telecommunications sector. The quality of applications for these licences was 463W excellent, and I am sure that those we have selected will make PCNs a powerful competitive force in the telecommunications world of the 1990s.