Cyprus’ telecoms watchdog set a date for the island country’s upcoming 5G auction for later this month, as it attracted four interested bidders after seeing delays due to a high starting price for licenses.
TeleGeography’s Commsupdate reported, bidders for the auction to be held on December 17 are Cyta (Cytamobile-Vodafone), Epic, and PrimeTel, alongside MVNO and fixed provider Cablenet.
The auction will be conducted by the Department of Electronic Communications (DEC) under the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy. Up for auction are six 2x5MHz lots in the 700MHz band, eight 50MHz lots in the 3.6GHz band.
Winners have to deploy enough 5G networks to cover 70% of the population, alongside all major motorways by December 31 2025.
George Komodromos, DEC head told the Financial Mirror, early delays to the auction were due to extensions granted by the regulator to the interested parties, who needed to raise more funds for the “high” reserve price for each spectrum licence CYP6 million ($12.4 million). Other extensions were approved when authorities were given new EU cybersecurity guidelines.