Network sharing agreements are becoming more common, as the cost of carrying mobile traffic increases and MNOs have to fight harder for profit. Three in particular has been very active in making these deals, for example in the UK, where it has a network sharing agreement with Everything Everywhere. We expect this trend to accelerate, as operators seek to cut costs by reducing infrastructure and capex where possible.

Ed Candy is group technology strategist for the 3 group. Here he talks to Mike Hibberd about the challenges facing the modern CTO.

John Blakemore is director of European regulatory affairs, Hutchison and will be speak on the topic on, “Growing the data roaming market” on Day 2 of the LTE World Summit, taking place on the 23-24 May 2012 CCIB, Barcelona, Spain. We catch up with him to see what the spectrum challenges are for 3, his views on roaming charges, and on innovation in the industry.

UK regulator Ofcom, has announced that, from June 20th, mobile operators are permitted to trade the rights to spectrum amongst themselves. The new regulation covers 900MHz, 1800MHz and 2100MHz spectrum and mean operators will be able to bid for the use of spectrum they believe the have greater need for than other operators.

The second and third-placed mobile operators in the Irish market, incumbent Eircom and Telefonica’s O2, have announced that they are to share networks in a deal that Eircom described as the first of its kind in Ireland. Eircom said that the deal will “result in an unrivalled mobile experience for customers” as the two carriers seek to meet growing demand for high bandwidth services.

Trust the UK’s smallest mobile operator, 3 UK, to try to start a price war over the latest Apple device to hit the shelves. We say ‘try’ to start a price war because it’s become apparent that the UK has sold out of iPhone 4s, at least for now anyway.