Spain ends 5G radio auction after telcos win 1 bln euros in frequencies

MADRID: Spain on Wednesday closed its radio frequency auction for the core 700 megahertz band essential to deploying ultra-fast 5G mobile data services, leaving some of the blocks on offer unsold, the Economy and Digital Affairs Ministry said.

The three operators admitted to the auction that started on Tuesday – Orange, Telefonica and Vodafone – together paid 1.01 billion euros ($1.19 billion) for blocks belonging to the paired 700MhZ band.

But there were no bidders for any of the three blocks of 5MhZ offered on the non-paired band, meaning the auction’s reapings fell further short of an initial 2.1 billion euro goal set in Spain’s public budget for this year.