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The Portuguese regulator is expected to auction off spectrum in six distinct bands
Portugal’s telecoms regulator has announced that it will hold the country’s first 5G spectrum auction in the second quarter of 2020.
A report from Reuters quoted sources at Anacom, the country’s telecoms regulator, as saying that the auction would take place between April and June next year.
The Portuguese regulator will auction off six bands of spectrum, including the 700MHz and 3.6GHz bands.
“The allocation of rights of use for frequencies should be subject to an auction procedure as this is a potentially a more transparent and objective process for all stakeholders and less intrusive in their business plans,” Anacom said in statement.
It is understood that all three of Portugal’s mobile network operators, namely Altice Portugal, NOS and Vodafone Portugal will take part in the auction, although none of the operators have yet commented on Anacom’s proposal.
The proposal will now enter a 20 day period of public consultation, after which Anacom will release more details of the auction.
Portugal has been a European leader in fibre network deployment and will hope to use its relative abundance of fibre assets to fast track its 5G mobile network rollout.
