No surprise, finally, the four major operators will be the only ones to compete for the 5G frequencies which will be put up for auction next April.
As Sébastien Soriano, president of Arcep announced last Monday, we now know which operators wish to acquire frequencies in the 3.4-3.8 GHz band for 5G. No surprise, these are Bouygues Telecom, Free Mobile, Orange and SFR.
It’s official, operators are entering the 5G race
The four players in the telecom market will therefore be the only ones competing for the frequencies put up for auction for 5G. The deadline for submitting an application was yesterday, Tuesday 25 February 2020 at 12 noon. The telecom gendarme explains in his press release that he must also check the application files to check whether each file is in good compliance.
Once this verification has been made, the list of operators participating in the auction will be finalized. Each will be allocated one of the four 50 MHz blocks for 350 million euros per operator. This allocation will be made in return for the commitment of operators on various points, such as coverage inside buildings, offering fixed access offers to 5G.
Once this first phase is activated, an auction system will take over to allocate the rest of the spectrum, namely 110 MHz divided into 11 blocks of 10 MHz, with a starting price of 70 million euros for each. These auctions will take place in April with a view to issuing authorizations in June 2020 at the latest, for a commercial launch of 5G in July 2020.
Orange is already ready to launch into 5G, just like Bouygues which has already announced launching its 5G commercial offers this summer.
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