UK mobile operator Everything Everywhere is reportedly in negotiations with the European Commission about delaying a sale of its spectrum in the 1800MHz band or reducing the amount that it needs to sell.
Citing a source with knowledge of the matter,…
UK mobile operator Everything Everywhere is reportedly in negotiations with the European Commission about delaying a sale of its spectrum in the 1800MHz band or reducing the amount that it needs to sell.
Citing a source with knowledge of the matter, Bloomberg reported today that Everything Everywhere sought to postpone the sale after delays in the separate UK auction process for assigning new frequencies in the 800MHz and 2.6GHz bands were announced.
Everything Everywhere has also reportedly asked to reduce the amount of spectrum it must divest.
An Everything Everywhere spokesman declined to comment. An EC spokeswoman said: “We have a duty to keep our decisions regarding asset sale deadlines, and hypothetical discussions about clearance conditions post-decision, confidential.”
Everything Everywhere is a UK joint venture between the French and German incumbents, France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom.
The JV originally announced that it had got approval from the EC in March 2010.
It said at the time that Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom had offered to divest 2x15MHz of their joint GSM spectrum in the 1800MHz band by the end of 2011.
It said that out of this divested spectrum, 2x10MHz needed to be cleared by the end of 2013 at the latest and a further 2x5MHz needed to be divested by the end of 2015 at the latest.
Matthew Howett, a lead analyst at Ovum, said that there is an incentive for Everything Everywhere to divest the spectrum before the UK’s planned auction of 800MHz and 2.6GHz spectrum, as if it does so it would be able to keep the revenue from the sale. If the spectrum is sold during the auction, the revenue would go to the government.
Howett also said that trying to value spectrum was a “fool’s game” as it was dependent on many factors, but suggested that the Everything Everywhere’s sale of 1800MHz spectrum could raise a similar amount of revenue as the amount raised by the sale of 1800MHz spectrum in the recent Italian spectrum auction (E477m).
