Mobile chip giant Qualcomm bought some spectrum a while ago and it has decided to sell it off. The block is 40MHz wide and sits in the 1.4GHz frequency range, the company bought it in 2008 for around £8.3 million.

Initially Qualcomm was interested in developing its own services for the frequencies. In the US it had an over-the-air broadcast system called FloTV which it shut in 2010 and sold the frequencies to AT&T. That service never launched here though, but perhaps if it had been more of a hit in the US it would have done.

To this day Qualcomm still conducts R&D around broadcast, and it has systems for 4G transmission too. Indeed, in the US the idea is to set up temporary service around sports events is designed to give attendees the ability to see video from the event which is locally broadcast. The idea here is to reduce the streaming burden on regular 4G networks.

Whatever plans Qualcomm had, it seems that it has realised that hanging on to valuable spectrum is no longer necessary, so it's going to be sold. It will allow other operators like Vodafone or Three to bolster their networks to allow more capacity.

Source: TrustedReviews