10 Jun 2016

What would Brexit mean for the UK's wireless comms industry?

The referendum to decide whether the UK will either remain in or leave the EU is one of the most important decisions our electorate will ever be asked to make. However, while plenty has been said about immigration and the now-infamous £350 million a week figure, there's been little discussion on what Brexit might mean for the UK's radio and wireless comms industry. Chris Pateman, CEO of the FCS gives his views on the subject.

I don't think the UK was the only member state to be surprised by the EU Commission's rather bombastic decision to gerrymander itself a seat at the next World Radio Council – still less its decision to presume to speak in our name. But the referendum means we are currently the only nation with the opportunity to formally reassert our national sovereignty over radio spectrum.

UK Business Radio dealers are extremely concerned about the direction of travel on spectrum allocation across the EU. The UK has a long history and a hugely varied deployment of users and uses within the UHF2 band, and we need to work closely with Ofcom just to manage the existing issues. We don't need the disruption of extremely important services in the UK arising from Harmonisation Decisions from the EU. Proposals for EU-wide uniformity of emergency services comms, for example, both threaten existing UK spectrum band-plans and ignore the practicalities of the UK's decision to use public cellular networks for emergency services voice and data applications.