German regulator, the Bundesnetzagentur, this week launched a multi-band spectrum auction that will offer among others, two blocks of spectrum in the 700 MHz band, the first in Europe to sell off the low-frequency 700 MHz band. The regulator will divide the two 30MHz blocks into pairs of blocks of 5MHz with a minimum price of €75 million per lot.
The 'Digital Dividend 2' auction which began on the 27th of May, will however only see incumbent players -Telefónica Germany, Telekom Deutschland and Vodafone - taking part. The winners will be obligated to cover 98% of the population with a minimum speed at the household level of 10 Mbps.
With the switch to DVB-T2, the low-frequency 700 MHz band that has so far been used for terrestrial television will be freed up and can be used for mobile broadband. The lower frequency band will allow network operators to roll out high speed internet using relatively fewer base stations to those areas that are currently under-served.
The multi-band spectrum auction will also see spectrums in the 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 1.5 GHz bands being offered for mobile and fixed communications.
