Vodafone and Three snap up Qualcomm’s UK spectrum

Chipmaker Qualcomm Inc has sold its United Kingdom spectrum rights to Vodafone Group Plc and CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd for about 200 million pounds, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

L-Band spectrum is used for supplemental downlink (SDL), which mobile network providers use to keep up with the increase demand for mobile data.

A UK-wide licence for the bandwidth, located between 1452 and 1492MHz, was bought by Qualcomm UK Spectrum (QUKS) in 2008 for £8.3 million and was harmonised by the European Union (EU) for mobile broadband use earlier this year. That basically means download-heavy services, such as video-on-demand, including the BBC iPlayer or YouTube can be delivered seamlessly to smartphone devices over a cellular data connection.

A Three spokesperson confirmed the company had bid for spectrum held by Qualcomm, but wouldn’t reveal any further details until Ofcom‘s review has been completed and the sale granted. Both QUKS and Vodafone and H3G will shortly submit respective applications to transfer the spectrum for UK communications regulator Ofcom approval.

“The L-Band spectrum complements Vodafone’s existing low frequency 800MHz spectrum which travels further and penetrates better through walls than other higher frequency 4G signals”. Qualcomm undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements in order to reflect any event or circumstance that may arise after the date of this press release.

QUALCOMM Incorporated (NASDAQ:QCOM) [Trend Analysis] has the market capitalization of 89.02 Billion.