Ofcom’s mmWave auction could fix slow 5G in busy cities

Ofcom is auctioning off a slice of the mmWave airwaves that could fix slow 5G connections around busy cities and landmarks.

In just a couple of weeks, on 16-17 of September 2025, the UK’s telecoms regulator will open the bidding on a huge chunk of ‘mmWave’ spectrum. You could think of it as opening a multi-lane motorway for mobile data that is designed to handle the traffic jams we all experience in crowded places.

Ofcom itself has said it’s “the most we’ve ever released in an auction,” a massive 5.4 GHz of spectrum across the 26 GHz and 40 GHz bands. It’s designed to realise the full potential of 5G and boost speeds and capacity where we need them most.

Fixing slow and unreliable 5G connections across Europe

This isn’t just notable for the UK. According to Luke Kehoe, an industry analyst at the network intelligence firm Ookla, the 5G auction “signals an early rekindling of mmWave interest in Europe amid a trough of disillusionment.”

Kehoe notes that Ofcom’s approach is quite clever. Instead of selling off licences for individual towns, a single licence will cover all 68 of the UK’s most data-hungry cities and transport hubs. This, he says, “should make it easier for national neutral host and multi-venue operators to spread deployments across multiple sites,” hopefully speeding up the rollout.

But let’s manage our expectations. This technology isn’t for blanketing the entire countryside. Kehoe points out that even in countries that are ahead of us, its use “remains hyper-local, with MNOs lighting specific venues and pilots on a site-by-site basis.”

In other words, think of it as a solution for specific problem spots – delivering multi-gigabit speeds at a football stadium, packed shopping mall, or a busy airport terminal – rather than a nationwide upgrade.

The catch after the mmWave 5G auction? Your phone probably isn’t ready

There is, however, a big roadblock to clear before you’ll no longer be struggling with a slow 5G connection and can stream 8K video in the middle of a festival crowd.

“The device mix in Europe remains the key bottleneck,” Kehoe warns. “Europe-sold iPhones lack mmWave, and most Android SKUs omit mmWave.”

Essentially, the new motorway is being built, but very few cars have the engine required to drive on it just yet. Kehoe predicts this will push “early usage toward CPE/enterprise devices (with Wi-Fi/ethernet distribution) and managed fleets.”

With this auction, Ofcom is getting the infrastructure in place, so that when our devices do catch up, the mmWave 5G networks will be ready for them. We’ll be keeping a close eye on who bids later this month to see who will be helping to put the UK’s slow 5G connections in the rear-view mirror.

See also: On-premise edge and private 5G key to industrial AI and security

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Tags: 5G, connectivity, europe, mmwave, mobile, networks, Operators, spectrum, telecoms