After 10 months of bidding, Portugal will become the last major European country to launch 5G. Operators must deploy rapidly if they are to meet the original deadlines for coverage
The end of a lengthy and painstaking process: In Portugal, the auction of spectrum for 5G lasted more than 10 months and significantly damaged the relationship between mobile operators and the regulator ANACOM. From the outset, operators argued that the conditions attached to the licences did not reflect the investment they were making and were too favourable for new entrants. During the auction, ANACOM angered the bidders by changing the rules on the go to speed up a process that was at a standstill. Last week, the auction finally ended after 1727 rounds. The principal bidding phase lasted a whopping 201 days, from 14 January to 27 October.
Operators paid a comparatively low price, but that may be the only upside: In total, operators paid €566.8m for spectrum across six bands (700MHz, 900MHz, 1.8GHz, 2.1GHz, 2.6GHz, and 3.6GHz). However, operators only competed for the lots above 1GHz, considering that the 700MHz and 900MHz lots were awarded at the reserve price. As a result, the 700MHz spectrum turned out to be among the cheapest in Europe, at 0.22 $/MHz/pop. This is better than what operators paid in Germany (0.24) and the UK (0.29). The national lots in the 3.6GHz band were awarded at prices between €10m and €11m –more than 8 times the reserve price. That equates to a price of 0.12 $/MHz/pop, which is significantly higher than the price paid by operators in Sweden (0.07) and Spain (0.06) but still lower than what was paid in France (0.16) and Germany (0.17).
How will ANACOM come back from this? Portugal will be the last major European country to launch 5G, and the relationship between ANACOM and the main operators is at an all-time low. Hardly a satisfactory outcome, despite the relatively reasonable prices operators paid for this spectrum. Despite the auction dragging on, operators will still be held to deadlines for coverage designed at the start of the process. In the 700MHz and 3.6GHz bands they will also have to provide national roaming for 10 years and MVNO access for the whole licence length. These requirements were perhaps a further incentive for the new entrants Dense Air and Dixarobil to focus on the cheaper regional lots in the 3.6GHz band, whose licences are valid until only 2025.
