Furious bidding between Vodafone AirTouch plc and Orange plc on the final day of last week’s Universal Mobile Telecommunications System auction in the United Kingdom drove the top bid for license B to $1.14 billion. For the second week in a row, Orange held the high bid at the end of the auction’s second week.
All thirteen companies that submitted deposits of about $82.3 million to enter the auction are still eligible to bid when the auction resumes today.
Vodafone AirTouch’s bid of $851.2 million remained unchallenged for three days last week before Orange raised the stakes on Friday. License B is the second-highest spectrum allocation and highly coveted by the country’s four incumbent operators.
License A, which is reserved for a new player in the U.K. wireless arena, drew an $844.7 million bid from SpectrumCo, a consortium including Nextel Communications Inc. License A, consisting of two by 15 megahertz of paired spectrum and 5 megahertz of unpaired spectrum, is the largest spectrum allocation.
Australia’s One.Tel and Crescent Wireless Ltd., a company backed by Global Crossing shareholders, tied with the highest bid of $462.6 million for license C at the end of the week and 41 rounds. License D drew a $471.4 million bid from WorldCom Wireless, a subsidiary of MCI WorldCom Inc. 3GUK, owned by Ireland’s Eircom, led the bidding for license E at $487 million.
Licenses C, D and E offer the same amounts of spectrum with two by 10 megahertz of paired spectrum and 5 megahertz of unpaired spectrum. License B includes two by 15 megahertz of paired spectrum.
Noticeably reserved during last week’s bidding was BT3G, owned by British Telecommunications plc. The company, which owns the country’s second-largest mobile operator, BT Cellnet, was expected to mount a strong offensive for license B.
The highest bidders for each license are ineligible to bid in round 42, the next auction round set to begin Monday morning.
The auction is predicted to last another one to four weeks.
Earlier last week, Spain awarded four UMTS third-generation licenses through a “beauty contest.” The country’s three incumbent operators and the Xfera consortium won the licenses (see related story on page 50).
