For seven years, AirData, a small wireless operator in Stuttgart, did something the largest German mobile operators, including T-Mobile, were unwilling to do: It delivered broadband Internet to consumers in remote corners of the country.
But at the end of 2007, AirData’s license to use the 2.6 gigahertz band expired after the country’s regulator, Bundesnetzagentur, deemed AirData’s service inappropriate for the frequency, which it wanted to reserve for mobile phone, not broadband, services.
Legal challenges by AirData in Germany and Brussels have kept the company operating, but its fight for survival underlines a major hurdle to pan-European broadband coverage.
“When it comes to obtaining a broadcast license, it is very, very political,” said Christian Irmler, the chief executive and founder of AirData, which has about 7,500 customers. “We spend most of our time just defending our right to keep our tiny presence in the German market against much larger, more influential competitors.”
Political obstacles have kept broadband Internet out of reach for 50 million to 100 million people throughout the European Union, according to the GSM Association, a group based in London that represents mobile operators. Most Europeans without access live in Eastern Europe, but tens of thousands also live in rural Britain, France and Germany.
Since 2000 and 2001, when the first frequency licenses for high-speed mobile service were sold in government auctions, most EU countries have refrained from selling new licenses. The tight control over frequency allocation makes it difficult for alternative operators, like AirData, to serve parts of Europe where bigger operators are unwilling to invest.
“The big issue around all of these markets is politics,” said Tom Phillips, GSM’s director of government affairs.
But the switchover from analog to digital television broadcasting is giving Europe a rare opportunity to break the bottleneck and get on the same wavelength, at least in wireless…