Vodafone highest bidder in 5 billion euro German spectrum auction

The bidding has ended in the latest German mobile spectrum, with the three big mobile operators spending over 5 billion euros on 270 MHz of licensed spectrum.

Vodafone Germany was the biggest spender, dropping 2.1 billion euros on a total of 110 MHz across four bands. Telekom Deutschland was second, investing 1.8 billion on 100 MHz, while 1.2 billion bought Telefónica Germany 60 MHz.

“After 16 days and 181 rounds the spectrum auction for mobile broadband ended today in Mainz, said the Bundesnetzagentur.  “All three companies, Telefónica Deutschland GmbH & Co. OHG, Telekom Deutschland GmbH and Vodafone GmbH, were successful in bidding for spectrum in line with their business models.”

The press conference isn’t until later today, so there is little additional commentary, but as you can see from the summary table below everyone got 2×10 MHz in the 700 MHz band and 2×10 MHz in the 900 MHz band. The extra investment from Vodafone and DT got each a chunk of 1500 MHz and some extra 1800 MHz spectrum.

Incidentally France has set the conditions for a digital dividend auction of 700 MHz spectrum to happen before the end of this year and has set a reserve price of 2.5 billion euros.