Italy raises €2.48b from 5G spectrum auction
MILAN: Italy, taking another step toward blanketing the country with speedy wireless coverage, raised a preliminary €2.48 billion (RM11.95 billion) in an auction of airwaves for fifth-generation (5G) services.
Telecom Italia SpA, Vodafone Group Plc’s local unit, Wind Tre SpA, Iliad SA and Swisscom AG’s Italian unit Fastweb SpA all bid for the spectrum, said Italy’s development minister in a statement late on Monday.
As a newcomer, Iliad had a special right to bid for a reserved package of 700-megahertz (MHz) frequencies, the most valuable. It paid about €676.5 million, according to the statement.
The carriers will be allowed to increase their offers tomorrow as they vie for the scarce resource. The 5G services are seen by the government as a way to boost the digitisation of public services and economic growth.
5G auctions across Europe represent a challenge for the region’s smaller mobile phone carriers. Their long-term business models could struggle if the larger players squeeze them out of important spectrum, New Street Research analysts James Ratzer and Andrew Entwistle wrote in a note yesterday.
In Italy, “the auction will be an interesting test case of Iliad’s financing capacity and its longerterm commitment to the Italian market,” said the analysts.
For Italy’s government, 5G is a way to boost the digitisation of public services and economic growth.
The spectrum sale could also pull in €2.98 billion for the state, said the New Street analysts, higher than the government’s budgeted estimate of at least €2.5 billion.