Frequencies “gold”: Free Mobile wants its piece of the pie – Boursier.com

(Boursier.com) – As announced in December, the state will sell to mobile operators frequencies of the 700 MHz band currently used for broadcasting by the end of this year. In a statement released Friday, the Ministry of Economy and the industry regulator, Arcep reveal the conditions in which the proceedings take place. The call for applications will be launched next month …

Competition that is “fair”

To avoid creating imbalances between operators, at the time the war Price raged in the area, the ceilings have been set. The state will sell six blocks of 2 × 5 MHz “to allow the opportunity to a large number of candidates to be allocated frequencies”. “These blocks are cumulative, so that candidates can offer their customers the highest possible rates. However (…) the same candidate can not obtain more than three blocks (ie 2 × 15 MHz) in the band 700 MHz and can not exceed a limit of 2 × 30 MHz on all the lower frequency bands (700 MHz, 800 MHz and 900 MHz), “argued Arcep.

For this tender, Free Mobile is one that has the greatest interest in participating in the auction. It is also the only one to buy more than two blocks, the other three operators already holding frequency called “low” … “We will have to return money to buy the spectrum and there we will see what are long-term investors in telecoms, “said the boss had thus of Free, Xavier Niel late last year.

Rural and transport as priorities

For this tender, operators will have to meet several requirements, beginning with coverage in rural areas. This complements the hedging strategy of the zones “white”. New obligations to improve access to mobile data in everyday trains (TER, RER, Transilien) have also been fixed. “They will be complemented by an enhanced regime of service quality surveys on all rail lines (including TGV) and metros,” says Arcep. SNCF has recently launched the project Net.SNCF to better cover the network 3G / 4G.

A financial windfall for the state

“The right price is the one who pays correctly this public resource that are the frequencies while allowing operators to invest and grow, “said Minister of Economy, Emmanuel Macron. The reserve price of each of the six blocks has been set at 416 million euros. The proceeds from this sale should allow to allocate funds to the Defence budget. Recall that for the last Auction Spectrum in the 800 MHz and 2,600 MHz, Orange, Bouygues Telecom, SFR (Vivendi ownership then) and Iliad had disbursed a total of 3.5 billion euros …

  Marianne Davril – © 2015 Boursier.com