Versatile Amphibian

Plenty has been written about Everything Everywhere selling 30MHz of 1,800Mhz spectrum to the UK's smallest operator 3 (including this , which is really good). Much of the aforementioned text is a bit sensationalist or misinformed, so I thought I'd summarise what's gone on and also attempt to answer the one thing that hasn't been covered: the price. In summary: Everything Everywhere (the result of the merger between Orange and T-Mobile in the UK, for those of you who haven't been keeping up :) ) were forced by the EU to sell a proportion of their collected spectrum in order that the market remained "fair" The spectrum is at 1,800MHz ("1800") and was originally used for carrying 2G mobile signals Although that frequency can be used for LTE, it isn't often. The more common bands are 800 and 2600, although others - including 2100 and 1800 - are sometimes used In any case, the spectrum won't be fully released to 3 until September 2015,...

In all the excitement about Ofcom's announcements regarding the UK's digital dividend auction, the mainstream press missed the latest country to auction off its spectral assets. Although its only the continent's 6th most populous country, Chile is interesting as it is the most stable and prosperous large country in Latin America and therefore hints at the future direction of other markets on the continent. The results of their regulator, Subtel's auction for 2,600MHz spectrum, suitable for the high bandwidth component of LTE were released on July 31st. Three operators acquired the spectrum: Claro - a subsidiary of America Movil, local telco Entel and Movistar, a subsidiary of Telefonica. What interests me most is the low price this spectrum went for. Entel paid the most for their block - $8.84Mn - but even this is a sixth of the global average price for this spectrum in terms of MHz per capita. Market leader, Claro, paid only five percent of the average for thei...

France became the latest country in Europe to successfully allocate its 800MHz spectrum today, achieving a rather higher sum than they expected. Not much more to say on the subject, expect that Orange France came within a whisker of breaking the record for amount paid per-person, per MHz for the LTE spectrum. Only T-Mobile in Germany paid more - EUR0.73 vs EUR0.71, demonstrating that even the current economic malaise hasn't dented enthusiasm for next generation communications.