The turn of the year saw two extra companies apply for UK telecommunications licences, as reported briefly. After months of study, Sprint International Inc finally announced that it will go ahead with an application for a UK telecommunication licence. The company’s proposals are now before the Department of Trade & Industry, with the blessing of the British Waterways Board, whose canal towpaths Sprint hopes to be using to house its optical fibres. The second company was Millicom Holdings (UK) Ltd which, without the benefits of a UK-wide network of waterways to host its network intends to build a radio-based system offering both narrow-band and broadband services over local and fixed links. Despite the differences in medium, both companies seem to have spotted a similar niche, concentrating in their announcements on the high bandwidth market, with video and the like being touted as possible applications. No doubt there is a market requirement here, but the choice of niche can also be seen as a pragmatic response to the companies’ lack of a local network. While Millicom is going for a purely domestic UK network, Sprint’s January 2 application includes a request to set up as an international operator, an eventuality that was not at the forefront of the government’s White Paper on competition. Nonetheless, the company’s UK managing director, Vincent Gargaro, is relatively confident. We have good reason to expect that it will go through – clearly, I wouldn’t have applied if I didn’t think that there would be a good chance, he pointed out. The company’s interest in a UK licence rides largely on the international capability that would enable Sprint to use the UK as a gateway hub to the rest of Europe and make the UK business a good strategic fit. Without that element, and the revenue that could be generated through offering cheap transatlantic capacity, it is doubtful whether Sprint would have much interest in sinking money into a UK-wide fibre network.
