The Irish telecoms regulator, ComReg, has released the results of its multi-band auction. H3GI, Meteor, Telefonica and Vodafone won spectrum rights in the 800MHz, 900MHz and 1800MHz bands paying €854.64 million of which €481.7 million will be paid upfront and the remaining €372.95 million paid in annual fees over the 17 year licence period.
DotEcon advised ComReg throughout the process and the auction was run on DotEcon’s WebBidder auction platform. More information about the Irish multiband auction can be found in ComReg’s Information Notice.
The auction followed a “Combinatorial Clock Auction” (CCA) format similar to that proposed by Ofcom for the upcoming 4G auction in the UK and used in number of recent spectrum auctions including the Danish 800MHz auction. The Irish auction included a number of novel features, such as the use of two time slices – requiring innovative activity rules – and party-specific lots giving bidders the option to liberalise existing spectrum holdings.