Irish 3G auctions to go

date: 12th December 2000, source: NetImperative

The Irish Telecoms regulator, Etain Doyle, has outlined the proposed 3G licence framework for the country, following a second round of public consultation.

The allocation is to be decided through a ‘beauty contest’ type approach, such as that used in France, Portugal, Spain, Norway and Finland, and is due to commence ‘early next year’ according to a government spokesperson.

There will be four licences of equal 3G spectrum, and additional spectrum will be offered to new market entrants. Incumbent telcos are Esat Digifone, Meteor and Eircell – which is still in acquisition talks with Vodafone. Of the three, however, only Meteor is yet to rollout a working GSM network – it will need deep pockets to do both GSM and 3G, but then cost savings could be made if both rollouts occur simultaneously.

There will be one Class A licence, that carries with it a requirement to provide minimum population coverage of 80%, and three class B licences, that must provide 53% demographic coverage. Companies are to have rolled out to the majority of their coverage areas by mid 2004.

Irish wireless companies have welcomed the non-auction allocation process, pointing once again at the cash shortage fears over both UK and German licence winners. Irish wireless developer wapprofit.com had even previously mooted that one of the Irish third generation mobile phone licences should be given free to an operator, so that isolated communities could be given high-speed access. However, this suggestion does not seem to have been taken up.

Peter Bellew, wapprofit CEO, said: “Even though it’s not going to be a full auction, there is still money to be made through this process by the government, and obviously they didn’t want to give any of this revenue up.” Bellew pointed out that mobile penetration in Ireland currently stands at around 60%, making high-bandwidth mobile services potentially very lucrative.

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