The price of spectrum was high, despite discounts being available for committing to cover rural areas
The auction raised £289m: The Norwegian 5G auction was wrapped up in just four days last week. The regulator Nkom started proceedings on 27 September, and finished them on 30 September with four winners. Telia and Telenor obtained the paired spectrum in the 2.6GHz band (2x30MHz and 2x40MHz, respectively) whereas Altibox secured all 50MHz TDD. In the 3.6GHz band Altibox and Telia each won 100MHz of spectrum, 80MHz went to Ice, and Telenor obtained 120MHz. In total, the auction raised NOK3.4bn (£289.2m). Telenor was the biggest spender at NOK1.2bn (£103.7m), followed by Telia at NOK910m (£77.1m), Altibox with NOK724.4m (£61.4m) and finally Ice having paid NOK554m (£46.9m).
Operators paid more than neighbouring countries for the 3.6GHz band: Operators paid 0.09$/MHz/pop for the FDD spectrum in the 2.6GHz band, and 0.014$/MHz/pop for the TDD spectrum. In the 3.6GHz band, operators paid 0.15$/MHz/pop. This is less than what operators paid in Germany and France (0.17 and 0.16$/MHz/pop, respectively) and slightly higher than the 0.13$/MHz/pop paid by UK operators across the entire 3.6GHz band. However, it is significantly higher than the price paid by operators in neighbouring Finland and Sweden for the 3.5GHz band (0.04 and 0.07$/MHz/pop, respectively) and for the 3.7GHz band in Spain ($0.06$/MHz/pop).
Facilitating mobile broadband in rural areas: Nkom recognised the need to facilitate deployment of 5G in rural areas, and provided a financial incentive for operators to do so. Altibox, Telia, and Telenor undertook this commitment, and will now have to provide broadband with speeds of at least 100Mbps in specific areas from 2022. In return each operator received a discount between 14% and 15% on the overall price they paid.
A favourable environment for private networks: Nkom is clearly committed to facilitating private networks for industrial use cases. The licences in the 3.6GHz band come with access obligations, whereby operators have to offer solutions in the form of ‘customised services’ or private networks. We recently noted that some countries (e.g. Denmark, Czech Republic) have followed this approach, whereas others have reserved part of the band for direct allocation of private permits (Germany, Sweden). Norway is actually doing both things, since in parallel Nkom is also opening up the 3.8–4.2GHz band for direct allocation of local licences, with a likely start in 2022.
Source: https://www.nkom.no/aktuelt/the-norwegian-5g-auction-has-concluded
