LTE comes to Russia; but at what price?

We were expecting to wait until September, but late last week Interfax reported that Russian regulators had successfully auctioned off spectrum bands between 2.5 and 2.7 GHz, suitable for the deployment of LTE mobile networks.

All four of the major Russian operators - VimpelCom, Mobile TeleSystems, Rostelecom and MegaFon - have acquired spectrum. But details are typically sketchy, particularly regarding the size of the spectrum lots and the price that was paid.

So I thought I'd do my own estimate as to the spread of prices. Assuming that the lots were the almost standard 2*20MHz and that they were national, I'd expect the spread to be EUR30.5Mn for the lowest successful bidder to EUR42.6Mn for the highest.

I'll keep track of the news on this one and see whether my "fair" price - calculated with reference to other similar spectrum auctioned globally, matches the real result in this notoriously grey market.

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