Light Reading Mobile – Telecom News, Analysis, Events, and Research
LR Mobile News Analysis  

Big 3 Win Spanish LTE Spectrum

July 29, 2011 | Ray Le Maistre |

Spain's Long Term Evolution (LTE) spectrum auction has concluded, with incumbent Telefónica SA, Orange Spain and Vodafone España S.A. sharing the spoils, leaving eight bidders empty-handed.

The auction raised €1.65 billion (US$2.37 billion), above the minimum required but short of the €2 billion ($2.87 billion) the Spanish government had hoped for.

Vodafone España won 60MHz of spectrum and says it will use its new airwaves to launch Long Term Evolution (LTE) services in rural as well as urban areas.

The operator, also known as Vodafone Spain, is paying €518 million (US$744 million) for 20MHz (2 x 10MHz) in the 800MHz band, which will become available in 2014 when the switch from analog to digital TV is completed in Spain, and 40MHz (2 x 20MHz) in the 2.6GHz band, which is available immediately.

Vodafone Spain, which has 17.35 million customers, says it has also been given permission to "re-farm" some of its 900MHz spectrum, which was initially issued for GSM services, for 3G and, as a result, intends to extend its 3G services into rural areas before the end of this year.

— Ray Le Maistre, International Managing Editor, Light Reading


Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

Network Computing encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, Network Computing moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. Network Computing further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

 
Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.
 
Related Content
Most Popular
Read
White Papers SPONSORED CONTENT
Featured
Resource Library SPONSORED CONTENT
Docsis Provisioning of EPON (DPoE)
CableLabs spec that blends Docsis-style provisioning with EPON