Global - Mobile - Spectrum Hot Real Estate

Synopsis

Archived report. The fact that businesses around the world are knocking on the doors of their governments asking for spectrum is a clear indication that this “telco real estate” market is hotting up. The reason for this is not too hard to guess – the enormous growth in the demand for mobile broadband. There is a large amount of pent-up demand because initially the mobile operators didn’t want to open up this market while they were in the middle of adding new customers to their mobile voice services. Now the carriers are looking towards a future of mobile broadband services which will require increased capacity and LTE deployment – and spectrum allocation is the key to positioning in these new markets.

This report explores some of the issues and trends surrounding the allocation of mobile spectrum. It provides brief case studies on some of the spectrum auctions occurring around the world in 2012.

Latest developments:

With the voice market saturated, the telcos attention has moved to mobile broadband which requires more spectrum; governments around the world are beginning to view the sale of spectrum as a viable revenue raising opportunity in a fragile economy.