Public sector given chance to sell £20bn of radio spectrum

Ofcom has established a new set of guidelines that will allow government agencies such as the Ministry of Defence to cash in on valuable spectrum worth up to £20bn by selling it on to telecoms companies looking to beef up mobile coverage.The regulator said that public sector organisations, including the Ministry of Defence, the Civil Aviation Authority, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and the UK's emergency services, hold around half of all radio spectrum below the 15 gigahertz band. That band of spectrum is the most sought after and congested frequency according to the regulator, suggesting the interest in securing the asset for commercial usage could be very high.Ofcom will detail its final proposals for public sector spectrum trading in October. The move follows a Treasury-backed review of spectrum in the UK published in 2005 that detailed the amount of available spectrum owned by the public sector and how it could be used to launch innovative new services.