Germany’s Federal Network Agency (FNA, known locally as the Bundesnetzagentur or BNetzA) has revealed it has assigned 3.6GHz spectrum acquired at auction earlier this year, in response to an application by Telekom Deutschland (TD). Following the conclusion of the auction in June, the four licence winners – TD, Vodafone, Telefonica and Drillisch Netz – were given the opportunity to come to an agreement on the position of the abstract frequency blocks they had acquired in the bands. As they did not reach complete agreement, the FNA decided on the allocation on 2 August. The FNA says that applications for assignment have also been received from Drillisch Netz and Vodafone, and are to be decided on shortly.
‘Once it has been assigned, the acquired spectrum can be used for 5G across the country. It is then up to the companies to provide fast broadband coverage. Network operators can finalise their network plans and roll out their networks rapidly,’ explained the FNA’s President Jochen Homann.
Licence obligations include coverage of at least 100Mbps for 98% of households in each federal state and for all motorways as well as the most important federal roads and rail routes by the end of 2022. By the end of 2024, all other federal roads must have coverage of at least 100Mbps, while state roads, seaports and major waterways, and all other railway lines must have coverage of at least 50Mbps.