The largest auction for telecomfrequenties that ever took place in the Netherlands, Wednesday start. This auction will determine which companies in the coming years in the Netherlands telecom services can offer via 2g, 3g and 4g.
Almost all of the frequencies which may be used for the supply of 2g, 3g or 4g to come under the hammer, allowing companies such as KPN, Vodafone and T-Mobile is frequentieruimte need to buy to stay active in the telecom market. The frequencies that are currently used for gsm and 3g, and previously for Digitenne were deployed, to be auctioned. After the auction start providers are likely to be quick with the first large-scale lte networks in the Netherlands.
The auction is much later than originally planned, because the Second Chamber the rules wanted to adjust to make sure that in addition to KPN, Vodafone and T-Mobile are also some newcomers frequentieruimte can buy. Therefore, some frequentieblokken specifically for newcomers reserved. If newcomers are kabelaar Ziggo and telecommunications provider Tele2; both bought in 2010, when the auction for the 2.6 GHz band, even though frequentieruimte. The government keeps secret who is at the auction, while the companies themselves also a strict vow of silence.
The companies have an interest in not only as much as possible frequentieruimte to buy, but also to smart to buy. So is the offered 850MHz band, which seems to be for gsm or lte, is hardly supported by current smartphones and tablets. The 1800MHz band, which is now in the Netherlands, especially for mobile phone is used, is, however, popular with hardware vendors, including the iPhone 5 and Nokia Lumia 920 support these frequencies.
It is unclear when the auction exactly must be ready; that can take weeks to months. It then becomes clear which company is the best frequencies purchased. The auction must be estimated in the tens to hundreds of millions of euros in the drawer. That is considerably less than 5.9 billion guilders that telecom companies laid for the umts frequencies in 2000.