The auction for six blocks in the 2.5 gigahertz (GHz) to 2.6GHz frequency band ended yesterday, generating a total of NT$27.925 billion (US$847.85 million) for the treasury.
The final sum exceeded the total floor price that the government had set for the frequency block by 93.9 percent, the National Communications Commission (NCC) said.
The commission said all the telecom carriers passed the right to bid two times in a row after finishing the 140th round of the auction. Following the rules of the auction, the commission then ruled that the auction had ended.
Apart from Taiwan Mobile — which dropped out of the auction on Nov. 24 — the remaining four telecom carriers all gained frequency blocks from the auction.
Chunghwa Telecom gained frequency blocks D2 and D4 for NT$9.955 billion, the highest among all the carriers. It was followed by Far Eastone Telecommunications, which acquired D3 and D6 blocks for NT$9.13 billion.
Meanwhile, Taiwan Star obtained the D1 block for NT$6.615 billion, and Asia Pacific Telecom secured the D5 block for NT$2.225 billion.
Based on the commission’s design, blocks D1 to D4 blocks are reserved for the development of a frequency-division-duplex (FDD) system, while the D5 and D6 blocks are for the development of a time-division-duplex (TDD) system. These are two main systems of long-term-evolution (LTE) technology, commonly known as the fourth-generation (4G) telecom service.
The FDD-LTE network requires the use of the paired spectrum, which has one block of spectrum in a lower frequency band and another associated block of spectrum in the upper frequency band.
The frequency bands are organized in this way so that one band can be used for uplink while the other is used for downlink.
On the contrary, the TDD-LTE network does not require a paired spectrum as it allows both the uplink and downlink to be carried by the same frequency band.
The floor prices set for the D1, D2, D3, and D4 blocks were higher than those for D5 and D6, which were priced at NT$3.5 billion, NT$3.7 billion, NT$3.7billion, NT$1.9 billion, NT$900 million and NT$700 million, respectively.
The D5 and D6 blocks must each reserve 5MHz of guard band to avoid interfering with the FDD-LTE system.
NCC planning department director Wang De-wei (王德威) said the results of the auction “fell within the commission’s estimated range.”
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