The National Audit Office (NAO) has confirmed to TechWeekEurope that it is investigating whether the Ofcom 4G spectrum auction achieved value for money.
The auction yielded £2.31 billion for the treasury, £1.2 billion less than it had accounted for, and significantly less than the total amount that some had suggested could be raised.
Ofcom said that the aim of the auction was not to generate revenue for the government, but to promote competition that will ensure consumers will benefit from the rollout of 4G services.
“The auction was designed to promote competition and ensure coverage, rather than to raise money,” they added. “These benefits will deliver significantly more value in the long term to the UK than simply the revenue raised in the auction.”
Helen Goodman, MP for Bishop Auckland and shadow secretary for Culture, Media and Sport had claimed on Twitter that she had requested that the NAO investigate the auction. However the NAO said that although she had written to them to express her concerns, its investigation was not prompted by her correspondence.
It had been suggested that fierce bidding for the UK’s largest ever sake of mobile bandwidth could raise as much as £4 billion, and the Chancellor, George Osborne earmarked £3 billion for deficit reduction, however such speculation proved wide of the mark. Vodafone won the most spectrum, paying £790.8 million, with O2, Three, EE and BT also securing valuable airwaves.
EE currently operates the UK’s only 4G network after it was granted permission to launch an LTE service using its existing 1800MHz spectrum, however other operators are expected to follow suit later this year.
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Its hardly surprising that companies did not bid as much this time round after the experience of the 3G auctions.