NMHH’s spring frequency auction went smoothly

The National Media and Communications Authority (NMHH) called the spectrum auction for free blocks of the 32 GHz band, announced in March, an unusual procedure, and in the end, apart from the form of the bidding (fully electronic bidding), nothing extraordinary actually happened: the three starting all three actors took as much spectrum as they wanted, practically at the asking price.

During the procedure, service providers could bid for 24 duplex sales units (2×28 MHz frequency) offered by NMHH, of which 18 sales units were claimed as follows:

• Vodafone won 10 sales units and the corresponding 560 MHz;
• Magyar Telekom successfully bid for 6 sales units and the corresponding 336 MHz;
• and CETIN acquired 2 sales units and, accordingly, 112 MHz.

The 32 GHz frequency band now allocated will be used by service providers for microwave transmission technology systems, as the 26 GHz spectrum currently allocated for this purpose must be made available for 5G networks based on an EU decision.

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A high-bandwidth data connection can be established on the millimeter wavelength frequency, but in an extremely limited area – the band has not typically been used by operators in Europe for this purpose, but mmWave installations have already taken place in the United States, with very moderate results.

The only special feature of the current procedure was that this time it was not Yettel, but CETIN Hungary, a partner company belonging to the same group of companies that operated the basic infrastructure, that bid for the spectrum, so the range of participants was not – at least technically – limited to the three mobile service providers with national networks. By the way, CETIN is currently the user of the 26 GHz spectrum acquired by Yettel (then still Telenor) under a lease agreement.

The bidding service providers will have to pay a total of HUF 970 million for the allocated spectrum, and the discounted bandwidth fee will be HUF 3.094 million, HUF 1.856 million and HUF 0.619 million per month for 4 years from the date of acquisition, and thereafter in 2038. double this amount until the May 23 deadline.