The first Portuguese auction for the assignment of spectrum bands starts next December. Coordinated by Anacom, the process will enable and empower new market players to offer Broadband Wireless Access services, wireless broadband in a mobile or fixed environment. The procedure has long been foreseen and awaited, but only yesterday was the regulation published in the Diário da República.
In the first phase of the auction, traditional operators, who already have licenses for the terrestrial mobile service or even for BWA, are left out, in an attempt to attract new players and boost competition.
These new players may have different origins and will not be subject to coverage obligations, although they have rules to comply with. Whoever receives the licenses has to proceed with the operation within a maximum period of two years and can only resell the license two years after starting the operation, details Público quoting Anacom vice president Ferrari Careto.
In December the auction starts with the qualification phase of interested parties (until the 17th), but only in January does the bidding phase materialize. Under discussion are several batches of frequencies in the bands between 3.4 and 3.8 gigahertzs, in nine geographical areas. The bidding base for the proposals starts at 100 thousand euros, for the Azores, and reaches 300 thousand euros, in regions such as Lisbon.
Accounts made by Jornal de Negócios, in today’s edition, indicate that the State can achieve a cash flow of 5.8 million euros if all lots of available frequencies are allocated.
If there is no interest in the spectrum that the auction process will provide, in the rest of the market, the procedure will allow traditional operators to enter the race as well.
