According to an unconfirmed report by Telecompaper, the Norwegian Post & Telecoms Authority (NPT) has received an application for frequencies in the 1800MHz band for use on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard. The application reportedly seeks two 20MHz frequency blocks in the 1710MHz-1785MHz and 1805MHz-1880MHz spectrum bands. Any competing bids must be submitted by 20 September and be accompanied by a bank guarantee.
Svalbard, which is midway between mainland Norway and the North Pole, previously hit the telecoms headlines in June 2011 when Telenor launched a Long Term Evolution (LTE) base station there, which it claimed was the northernmost 4G network in the world at that time. The site uses Huawei’s SingleRAN LTE solution and is located in Longyearbyen, Svalbard’s largest settlement, where temperatures drop to as low as -50 degrees celsius in winter.