As the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, intimated, Amendment 54A comes out of the same concern, but takes a slightly different view of the problem, placing the onus on the Secretary of State rather than Ofcom. The noble Lord, Lord Mitchell, spoke about fixed and mobile convergence, and at the heart of the concern here is that we are not talking about two separate markets when we talk about broadband and wireless; with the approval of BT’s acquisition of EE, one player not only has a dominant position in fixed line but already has the lion’s share of the spectrum already allocated, at 42%. As the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, has said, this may come up in a different place, but it is at the heart of concerns expressed here.
Clearly the two weaker players were not allowed to join together, so we have an asymmetry in the wireless market, with two strong players and two weaker operators, which adds to the imbalance of spectrum allocation. We should be aware that spectrum allocation imbalance can clearly affect prices. It could affect access and also the speed with which technologies are rolled out: a land bank, or the equivalent, could be created.
It seems that Ofcom has already recognised this issue and is seeking to limit access to one of the bandwidths—the 2.3 gigahertz—but has not covered bands in the 3.4 gigahertz range so the principle appears to have been acknowledged by Ofcom but the measure has not been fully thought through. In a sense, we are debating how much of a problem this is, given that Ofcom has acknowledged that it is a problem.
This is, therefore, also a probing amendment, and it would place a requirement on the Government, rather than Ofcom, to assess the situation and come back with a thorough review of whether this really is an issue. Clearly there is a perception, but we need to measure that perception and publish some sort of assessment of whether 30% is the right limit and, indeed, whether there is a problem at all. I therefore ask your Lordships to consider this as a way of teasing out issues that, if they are not dealt with now, will come back to haunt us much later.