The 5G auction in Austria will start "shortly" and run until the end of September at the latest, according to Klaus M Steinmaurer, managing director of regulator RTR. Steinmauer added that the auction aims to support the expansion of "ultra-fast" mobile broadband. The frequencies on auction range from 700 MHz (6 blocks), 2100 MHz (12 blocks) and 1500 MHz (9 blocks). The allocation process should be completed in Q3.
The regulator had postponed the auction from April due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In Austria, 2,100 cadastral communities are currently poorly or not at all supplied with high-quality mobile broadband services, the regulator said. For this reason, it has linked the acquisition of frequencies in the 700 MHz bands with the requirement to equip 900 under-served cadastral communities with 5G.
For the remaining 1,200 cadastral communities, it has developed a "bonus system", meaning that bidders will have to follow certain extra obligations to supply individual cadastral communities, but they will receive a bonus in the form of a price discount.
The 5G auction foresees further supply requirements, for example for traffic routes. For the supply of motorways and railway lines, the regulator relies on cooperation between operators of traffic routes and the buyers of the frequencies, it said. The regulator has also expanded and specified the framework conditions for cooperation ("sharing") between the operators to meet the supply requirements. In addition to passive sharing, active sharing and even spectrum pooling will be allowed for the first time in the future.
