France to kick off 700MHz auction on Monday

France’s auction of 700MHz spectrum will being on Monday, with Bouygues Telecom, Free Mobile, Orange and SFR competing for the highly-valued spectrum currently used for digital-terrestrial broadcasting but now earmarked for mobile broadband applications.

French regulator ARCEP plans to issue an update on the status of the auction at the end of each day, up until the end of the procedure. which could take one or several days. The update will include details of the price reached on each block at day’s end and whether this is the closing price of a block or the auction will continue the following day.

ARCEP is auctioning six blocks of 5MHz, with a starting price of €416 million. In subsequent rounds, the regulator will increase the price per block by €5 million over the previous round.

The auction takes place against a background of media regulator the CSA warning that the procedure for transitioning the spectrum next April needs to be amended to avoid potential problems with the DTT network.