Lord Maxton
Main Page: Lord Maxton (Labour - Life peer)
Baroness Garden of Frognal
The costs for this will be borne predominantly by the licensees of the 800-megahertz spectrum; that will be part of the auction bid that they will have to sign up to. It is certainly not expected that the Government will have to pay substantial sums of money to support what is basically a commercial transaction, albeit one with, of course, very significant impacts for the economy and for people generally.
Lord Maxton
Will the Minister give an absolute assurance right now that, whatever problems might arise from this, there will be no further delay in the implementation of the 4G rollout? We in this country are already too far behind other countries in rolling it out.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
Yes, indeed, my Lords. This is one of the counterarguments: that we really want this to roll out as rapidly as possible. In many other countries this has already happened. Our advantage is that we have been taking lessons particularly from Sweden, which was in the forefront of the rollout, in where the difficulties occurred and where we might be able to fast-track our system.