O2 and Vodafone are threatening the government with legal action over its plans to sell radio spectrum currently owned by Orange and T-Mobile, reports FT.com. This could delay the UK's 'Digital Britain' broadband plans from becoming law until after the general election.
The merger between Orange and T-Mobile's UK business has recently been approved as long as the new business sells some of its 1800MHz bandwidth. However, Vodafone and O2 are both said to be unhappy that the surplus spectrum will be sold to a single bidder and are apparently talking about appealing against this decision.
BT has previously said it's also unhappy with the government's Digital Britain plans because it believes mobile phone companies are being given an unjustifiable government subsidy by having their 3G licences extended.