News that UK Broadband, a nationwide at holder of 3.5GHz and 3.6GHz spectrum across Britain, plans to launch a mobile broadband wholesale service based on LTE brought on a severe case of déjà vu. For a company which acquired its spectrum back in 2003, it has now been attempting to deploy a viable wireless broadband business for almost a decade.

As reported in the Financial Times, it appears that UK Broadband has now set its sights on launching an LTE-based network offered as a wholesale service. The company has petitioned the UK regulator, Ofcom, for permission to support the 4G standard within the spectrum bands it owns.

This has been more or less confirmed by UK Broadband CEO, Nicholas James: "It is the company\'s intention to launch a 4G service. We are currently working with our vendors to finalise the equipment offering on our spectrum. And we are finalising our network planning and our business plan."

If UK Broadband does successfully deploy such a 4G network it will represent a case of third-time-lucky for the troubled wireless broadband provider. The company has had a distinctly rocky history. Having secured 3.5GHz spectrum licenses covering virtually all of the UK back in 2003 the company had grand ambitions of deploying a consumer-focused wireless broadband service across the country in 2004. In those days of pre-WiMAX, the company experimented with various proprietary solutions from IPWireless (which has since been acquired by NextWave) and Navini (since acquired by Cisco). Unfortunately, these early offerings coincided with the launch of cellular 3G services by the country\'s five mobile network operators which enjoyed the benefits of mobility and cheaply subsidised user equipment (dongles and data cards).

The arrival of commercial WiMAX equipment saw UK Broadband embrace the burgeoning wireless standard but it never succeeded in widely deploying the technology. In 2010, the company\'s competitor Freedom4 shut itself down and sold its 3.6GHz spectrum to UK Broadband for a paltry $20 million. Freedom4 was one of the many spectrum holders around the world which attracted huge investments from Intel back in the day when the semiconductor giant was fanatically championing WiMAX technology like a televangelist on steroids.

Unable to make a success with WiMAX, UK Broadband now appears to be eyeing a wholesale business model using LTE, not dissimilar from what Clearwire is doing over in the US. The challenge for UK Broadband is that the spectrum which it holds is poorly suited for wireless broadband coverage. At 3.5GHz, in building coverage is challenging, particularly in the UK where homes built from brick and stone are commonplace. In order to achieve a decent level of coverage, a greater density of base stations is required, substantially ramping up the cost of a deployment. UK Broadband\'s competitors will likely be offering rival LTE services at frequencies as low as 800MHz, which has far superior propagation properties, highlighting the challenging environment in which the company will operate.