Spanish incumbent Telefonica emerged as the big spender in the Spanish spectrum auction that closed yesterday, after it committed to pay €169m (US$231m) for a nationwide block in the 900MHz band.
The Spanish government was auctioning spectrum in the…
Spanish incumbent Telefonica emerged as the big spender in the Spanish spectrum auction that closed yesterday, after it committed to pay €169m (US$231m) for a nationwide block in the 900MHz band.
The Spanish government was auctioning spectrum in the 900MHz and 2.6GHz bands. In total, seven companies won spectrum blocks and committed to pay a total of €185.4m (US$253m) to the government.
France Telecom, Telefonica and Vodafone each won nationwide spectrum blocks. While Telefonica paid out for a block in the 900MHz band, Vodafone committed to pay €10.4m for two blocks of spectrum in the 2.6GHz band and France Telecom committed to pay €5.20m for one block in the 2.6GHz band.
The government was also auctioning regional spectrum licences.
Four Spanish regional cable operators – Cota, Euskaltel, R Cable and Telecable – acquired regional blocks in the 2.6GHz band.
Cota paid €157,000, Euskaltel €232,000, R Cable €298,000 and Telecable €115,000.
Eight companies had been selected to take part in the auction. All of them won spectrum, aside from Wimax Online, the Spanish WiMAX provider.
In a statement, the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism said: “The tender of all the available spectrum will permit the provision of mobile broadband services in rural areas and the introduction of 4G (LTE) mobile telephony, with the obligation of reaching a mobile broadband coverage of 98% of the population.”
The €185.4m raised in total fell short of the €189m that the government said last week would be the total starting price for all of the blocks taken together.
Nonetheless, the government said that the completion of this auction has brought to an end its sale of spectrum, which has raised just under €2bn.
The government spokeswoman emphasised that this was in the higher part of its forecast of €1.6-2bn.
16 regional spectrum blocks were not taken by any company in the auction. The spokeswoman said that if at any time an operator would be interested in this spectrum, they could contact the government and a contest could be held to award it.
It raised €1.65bn in the auction earlier this year for spectrum in the 800MHz, 900MHz and 2.6GHz bands, which saw France Telecom, Telefonica and Vodafone acquiring the majority of the spectrum blocks on offer.
It also raised €168m in a separate contest for spectrum in the 900MHz and 1.8GHz bands.
