The Upper 6 GHz band (6425–7125 MHz) has the potential to deliver significant benefits to UK consumers by enhancing Wi-Fi and mobile services, supporting economic growth, and enabling a wide range of innovative services.
In our January 2026 Statement and further consultation, we published several decisions and further proposals to enable both Wi-Fi and mobile services to use the band efficiently, and to make the band available in the UK as fast as possible. We proposed that 540 MHz of the band (6585–7125 MHz) would be mobile priority.
We also decided in January 2026 that any mobile award for the Upper 6 GHz band will be subnational. This is because the physical characteristics of the band makes it well suited to areas where high volumes of data traffic are concentrated in a relatively small geographic footprint, predominantly urban areas. We will use an approach similar to what we used in the mmWave award by defining geographical “6 GHz high density areas”, which will be the locations where Upper 6 GHz mobile licences are awarded.
The focus of this consultation is to set out our proposed high density areas and our proposals to ensure that mobile operators will be able to deploy in those areas without significant constraint from incumbent users.
What we are proposing – in brief
- A set of high density areas for Upper 6 GHz which are an expanded version of those used in the recent mmWave award.
- Changes to the authorisations of fixed links and Programme Making and Special Events (PMSE) in the band, to ensure high density areas are available for mobile use. These changes include:
- Providing five years’ notice of intention to revoke licences of those fixed links in Upper 6 GHz that are incompatible with mobile deployments in high density areas. All other links in the band would remain unaffected by this proposal.
- Providing five years’ notice that we will remove PMSE access to 7110–7125 MHz from the 7 GHz Programme Making and Special Events (PMSE) allocation. In practice these frequencies will be available for mobile services before the end of the notice period because there is sufficient bandwidth in the rest of the 7 GHz band to meet PMSE demand, except for very few major events – we will consider the supply of spectrum for these separately.
- To keep the Upper 6 GHz band open to new fixed links in the longer term, in locations that are compatible with future mobile use in high density areas.
- To protect the Radio Astronomy Service (RAS) use of the band, by requiring that mobile deployments do not create interference exceeding -159 dBm/50kHz in the 6650‒6675.2 MHz frequencies used by RAS, at each of the six radio astronomy sites currently active in the band.
Responding to our consultation
Please submit responses using the consultation response form no later than 5pm 6 July 2026.