The Italian government is hoping that its LTE auction will generate up to €3 billion if the five registered bidders acquire all the available spectrum.
The firms that have applied for bidding rights include Telecom Italia Mobile, Vodafone Italy, Wind, 3 Italia and the WiMAX operator Linkem, which currently provides wireless broadband services to 200 cities and towns across Italy.
The spectrum available includes bands within 800MHz, 1800MHz, 2GHz and 2.6GHz which the government claims will be suitable for LTE services.
Applications to enter the bidding closed last Friday, and those that have been successful will now have 30 days to prepare their offers. Bidding is scheduled to commence on Aug. 30, with the auction closing on September 30.
For more:
- see this Reuters article
- see this Telegeography article
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