Germany closes €5.08 billion spectrum auction

German regulator, the Bundesnetzagentur, closed its mobile broadband spectrum auction on Friday, raising a total of €5.08 billion.

Germany sold blocks of spectrum to Telefonica Germany, Telekom Deutschland and Vodafone – who paid €1.20 billion, €1.79 billion and €2.09 respectively.

In total 270Mhz of spectrum was sold across various frequency bands, including 700Mhz, which is currently used for digital terrestrial television. Spectrum was also sold in the 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 1.5 GHz bands for mobile and fixed communications.

Germany kicked off the auction last month and is the first in a wave of European Union countries expected to auction 700 MHz spectrum for mobile broadband use.

Plans to reallocate the 700 MHz band from terrestrial broadcasting to wireless broadband in region one (Europe, Africa and the Middle East) were first set in motion at the World Radiocommunications Conference in 2012.

Last year, the European Commission’s ‘Lamy Report’ recommended that the 700 MHz spectrum allocation should take place across Europe by 2020 – plus or minus two years – allowing for individual countries to plan and execute their own reallocations of the band. The UK’s 700 MHz auction is expected at some point during the current parliament.