Germany to start auctioning part of 5G frequencies on Tuesday

The Bundesnetzagentur, the federal German regulator for the telecom and postal markets, among other things, will start on Tuesday with the auction of frequencies in the 2GHz band and frequencies between 3.4 and 3.7GHz.

These frequencies will go under the hammer on Tuesday due to scarcity, the regulator said. The companies participating in the auction are the big three network operators in Germany, namely Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone and Telefonica Deutschland. In addition, the company Drillisch Netz is also participating, a virtual mobile provider managed by the company United Internet.

The Bundesnetzagentur has also already announced a registration procedure for frequencies in the range between 3.7 and 3.8GHz for local and regional use. In addition, a registration procedure is being developed for the 26GHz band. It is not yet clear when these frequencies will be auctioned.

The three German telecom operators had previously filed a lawsuit against the Bundesnetzagentur, led by Deutsche Telekom, in an attempt to avoid Tuesday’s auction. The regulator had tightened the conditions for the 5G auction, including the requirement that a speed of 100Mbit/s must be achieved at 98 percent of all German households before the end of 2022. The demand to share the networks also received little support from the companies. A few days ago, however, the telecom companies were ruled against by the judge, so that the auction will continue anyway.

The Bundesnetzagentur probably hopes to raise several billion euros with the auction. This money will be invested in the German broadband network. The auction can last for weeks. In 2015, more than 5 billion euros was raised during a 4G auction and in 2000 more than 50 billion euros was paid for the then allocated 3G frequencies.