News

Eleven new UK GSM mobile carriers! - but who is CyberPress?

by Guy J Kewney | posted on 25 April 2006

Ofcom has announced that it will award some "thin" cellular phone franchises in May; and the winners include - beside the usual suspects, a company called CyberPress. Is that Pipex?

The bidders are named in the 1781 awards list published today. Micro-cells are the most likely applications, and potential applications for these bands include private GSM networks in office buildings or campuses; most mobile phones operate at these frequencies, Ofcom said.

Dean Bubley [above, right] at Disruptive Analysis said: "These are 'thin' low-power 1800MHz GSM spectrum licences, which could enable deployment of some innovative business models, using technologies like picocells for indoor cellular services, along with normal low-cost handsets."

Exactly what it will mean, is still far from clear, Bubley said. He listed his guesses as follows:

the price for making GSM calls when users are not actually "mobile" but nomadic (ie at home/work) will plummet. "This has already happened up to a point, but will now accelerate further, especially given other initiatives like dual-mode Fusion-type service launches and (probably) Genion-style HomeZones."

we're going to see businesses exert a much greater level of power over mobile operators. "If large enterprises and government bodies have a choice of 16 mobile operators (and probably countless MVNOs), it seems very likely that corporate cellular tariffs will cease to be such a burden on CIOs' telecom budgets."

it's going to be tricky: "It'll probably take longer to get things up and running than everyone expects. For example, does anyone know what happens when a phone's "network selection" menu has 10+ options shown? Were the menus even designed to cope with that many, perhaps scrolling onto another page?"

a lot of companies that have been ignoring picocells and femtocells are going to sit up and take notice.

lots of network security equipment vendors will have to get their act together. 'Remember the fuss a few years ago when people were plugging "rogue WiFi access points' into enterprise networks & PCs? Welcome to guerilla wireless v2.0 , only this time with cellular."

Bubley said in his blog that he was particularly fascinated by the appearance of a new bidder in the race: Cyberpress. That looks to be either a French-based media company, or a Pipex spinoff. "Interestingly, it appears on the Pipex CEO's list of current directorships, though," said Bubley.

Tags: Ofcom/a>, picocells