The LTE auctions continue to stack up. The latest results have come in from Taiwan (see separate item), Finland and New Zealand.
Finland has always been in the vanguard of allocating new spectrum and is one of the world’s most mobile nations, partly thanks to being the home of Nokia (which even managed to pressurize the government to ban telephone boxes). However, despite being in the first wave of 2.6GHz LTE sales, and allowing refarming of 1.8GHz GSM spectrum as far back as May 2009, it has lagged in the important 800MHz digital dividend band.
However, it has now achieved its target price for the frequencies, raising more than €100m ($137.4m) after a marathon nine-month process. The country may be thinking it should go back to its traditional practice of distributing licences by beauty contest ‘ minister of housing and communications, Pia Viitanen, admitted: ‘It is regrettable for all parties involved that the auction process was so lengthy. We will make use of the experience in drafting the reform of electronic communications legislation, the Code for Information Society and Communications Services, and ensure that future auctions will not get prolonged in such a way.’
The winning bidders were DNA, Elisa and TeliaSonera Finland, which must all launch commercial services within two years of the start of 2014 and cover 95% of the population within three years. DNA CEO Jukka Leinonen said in his statement that his company would continue to invest in its 1.8GHz and 2.6GHz networks for urban capacity while using 800MHz to expand coverage. In a future stage, it is likely to use carrier aggregation to combine the three bands and boost overall speed and capacity. DNA currently covers over 40 cities and 2m POPs with 4G. TeliaSonera has 40% population coverage in 1.8GHz and 2.6GHz while Elisa said it had reached 230 locations.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, New Zealand has completed initial LTE spectrum auctions, with the spoils going to the established players despite much talk, ahead of the process, about encouraging new entrants. Telecom New Zealand and Vodafone will pay NZ$66m ($54.8m) for their franchises while the smaller, prepaid-focused carrier 2degrees will pay NZ$44m.
The regulator introduced a five-year payment plan for the fees, partly to encourage new bidders.
The auction has been a controversial one, dogged by complaints from Maori tribes that the spectrum rights were granted to them by Britain, and therefore cannot be sold by the government. However, the auction went ahead while that case remains, as yet, unheard.