5G spectrum in the 700-MHz and 3.6 GHz to 3.8-GHz regions has been awarded by Ofcom in an auction raising £1.356 billion for 80 MHz of spectrum in the 700MHz band and 120MHz of spectrum in the 3.6-3.8 GHz band, for a total of 200 MHz of new spectrum.
The new allocations increase mobile operator spectrum assets by about 18 percent. With the exception of the very-high 3G spectrum prices United Kingdom and elsewhere, U.K. spectrum prices have not been exorbitant.
Prices paid for C-band spectrum (3.3 GHz to 4.2 GHz) in 5G-relevant auctions since 2015 range from $0.002 per MHz POP (Slovakia, Norway and Romania) to $0.424 per MHz POP in Italy, according to the Global Mobile Suppliers Association.
The sums bid are less than what many observers expected, possibly because of spectrum limitation screens that decreased demand by the largest mobile operators save O2, which could bid as much as it wanted.
Demand might also have been shaped by expectations about the revenue and profit to be generated by 5G, as well as by the anticipation of additional auctions in the future, or memories of the overbidding that happened for 3G licenses. All those issues would depress demand.
In recent decades U.K. spectrum prices have been somewhere in the middle of prices within Europe or internationally.
By way of comparison, the recent U.S. C-band auction of assets in the 4-GHz range auctioned 280 MHz of spectrum, but across a much-larger potential customer base, with high average revenue per account metrics.
The point is that U.K. spectrum prices, on a MHz-POP basis, tend to fall in the middle ranges, as was expected by some prior to the auction.
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