Telekom Austria says it will be the first to launch commercial LTE – with €90 a month tarrif
Austrian telecoms regulator RTR has concluded the auction of 140MHz of paired spectrum and 50MHz of unpaired spectrum in the 2.6GHz band – raising €39.5 million from the four incumbent operators Telkom, Hutchison, T-Mobile and Orange.
A1 Telekom Austria acquired 2×20 MHz in the paired band and 25 MHz in the unpaired band, while Hutchison 3G Austria received 2×20 MHz in the paired band and 25 MHz in the unpaired band. Orange Austria Telecommunication GmbH acquired 2×10 MHz in the paired band, and T-Mobile Austria GmbH was assigned 2×20 MHz, likewise in the paired band.
The auction was conduced by the Austrian regulatory authority (TKK) and took place from September 13 to September 20, 2010. A total of 14 paired and 9 unpaired frequency blocks were offered in this auction which had a total minimum bid value of €7.4 million. The regulatory authority expects that the frequencies will be used primarily for high-speed mobile broadband services in areas of high population density, for example using LTE (Long Term Evolution) technology.
A1 Telekom Austria said that it has acquired four paired frequency blocks with a bandwidth of 2 x 5 MHz each and five unpaired frequency blocks with a bandwidth of 1 x 5 MHz for a total of €13.2. The operator said it would become the first Austrian provider to commercially launch LTE.
“We have been intensively testing LTE for a few years and based on our extensive expertise and year-long experience we will be able to start the commercial launch of this cutting-edge technology immediately after the grant of the license. Our base stations meet all technical prerequisites for the start, thus we will be the first mobile provider to start LTE in Austria,” said Hannes Ametsreiter, CEO Telekom Austria Group.
A1 Telekom Austria will launch a new tariff “A1 Broadband LTE” in Q4 2010 that will provide customers with speed up to 150 Mbps, a download volume of 30 GB and will be marketed at a price of €90 per month.