Spectrum Auction in Germany ends up in a Low Price Note
The massive spectrum auction of Germany that came to end on Thursday last week saw in contrast to the spectrum sale in India, half the expected sums being raised. It is perceived that this depression in the 3G broadband spectrum taking in Germany to a tune of Euro 4.38 billion was due to the memories of colossal overpayment by German mobile firms and the credit crunch.
Incidentally, the telecommunications market analysts at KPMG had foreboded an income of around Euro 8 billion.
Meanwhile, the fears of the smaller mobile operators in the country that the spectrum auction would favour the prominent mobile operators of Germany were to some extent justified. The three leading mobile broadband providers operating in Germany, Vodafone, T-Mobile and O2 each acquired two paired 5MHz sections of the 800MHz band frequency.
The 800MHz frequency is considered the key band for rolling out reasonable good mobile broadband coverage across the rural areas of the country. It is also noteworthy that mobile operator E-Plus owned by KPN, the smallest operator in Germany failed to acquire any of this pricey spectrum.
The auction witnessed the sale of forty one spectrum blocks in total. The sale was made from the 800MHz frequency, and 1.8GHz band, 2GHz band and 2.6GHz band. Twelve blocks across these bands were secured by Vodafone for Euro 1.42 billion, while O2 bought eleven blocks for Euro 1.38 billion. T-Mobile secured ten blocks for Euro 1.3 billion.
Niek Jan van Damme, the chief of German operations for DT stated that they secured all the spectrum blocks required to moving ahead with their network expansion. It is understood that DT would use the higher bands for LTE and 3G broadband expansion in urban areas while earmarking the 800MHz spectrum to further LTE in the rural areas of the country.
