Finland’s three main mobile operators – Elisa, TeliaSonera and DNA – were all successful in acquiring mobile broadband spectrum in a national auction that closed yesterday. The 4G spectrum licenses are granted for up to 20 years.
The auction – in the 2500-2690MHz band – closed after five days and 27 rounds and raised EUR3.8 million for the government in total. Market-leader Elisa bid EUR834,700 for 50MHz of spectrum, TeliaSonera Finland bid EUR810,200 for 50MHz and DNA bid EUR675,700 for 40MHz. The starting price of a spectrum block was EUR 15,000/MHz. The spectrum will allow all three operators to launch LTE and a forth operator to launch WiMAX.
One block of spectrum was suitable for TDD WiMAX services, and acquired by Finland’s Pirkanmaan Verkko, which paid EUR1.47 million for 50MHz. A fifth bidder, Cyprus-based WiMAX Financial, which operates mainly in eastern Europe, failed to reach the reserve price. In Norway, the WiMAX winner was Craig Wireless.
The auction was the first ever radio spectrum auction in Finland. Finland in the past adopted the ‘beauty contest’ approach with free or very low cost licenses for those with the most attractive business plans.
The auction raised €3.8m (Euros), which is far less money for Finland (pop: 5.3 million) than similar 2.6 GHz auctions raised in its neighboring states, notes Caroline Gabriel. The auction in Norway (pop: 4.8 million) raised €25m while Sweden (pop: 9.3 million) raised €230m, both in 2008, says Gabriel.
The Finnish government plans to offer high-speed broadband connections with a speed of at least 100 megabytes a second to nearly all Finns by the end of 2015. The first step is to secure broadband of at least 1 Mbps by July 2010.
