All four of Poland’s mobile network operators are taking part in 3.6GHz band 5G auction
As the long-overdue 3.5GHz 5G auction moved a step closer, Polish regulator, the Office of Electronic Communications (Urzad Komunikacji Elektronicznej, UKE) said it had received initial bids from Iliad’s Play (P4), Plus (Polkomtel), Orange Polska and T-Mobile Polska.
Authorities are hoping to complete the auction of four 15-year licences in the fourth quarter of 2023 – missing the original August deadline. According to Telegeography, the government is set to announce the start of the long-awaited auction of 5G-capable 3.5GHz licences in the next few weeks.
This is second attempt by the Polish government to do the 5G auction. The first auction was opened in March 2020 but the process was derailed by the pandemic and then delayed by the work of the Polish government waiting on the amendments to the Act on the National Cybersecurity System (KSC) – which is still not finalised.
Following an initial public consultation in December 2022, UKE opened consultations on the auction documentation for the C band, 3480-3800MHz frequency. Last month the regulator kicked off a second consultation process, having increased the spectrum offered by each licence from 80MHz to 100MHz while keeping the reserve price for each block at PLN450 million ($108m) – the same as in 2020.
At the same time, network coverage obligations were reduced but the bidders will have to meet increased requirements concerning the infrastructure installations as well as increased quality requirements.
Despite the KSC security framework not being finalised, Poland’s poor 5G coverage to date, plus the availability of EU funds for this project, meant the regulator decided to launch the auction in the current regulatory framework.
The auction documents have already taken into consideration the approval of the EU’s NIS2 Directive, but there is no provision on high-risk suppliers, which could change later if included in the KSC. According to Strand Consult, Poland’s current 5G RAN is supplied by 38% Chinese vendors, for example.
UKE now has 21 days to qualify applicants and verify the compliance of their bids with the conditions of the auction. Qualified entities will start a 24-day procedure of getting acquainted with the IT auction system and bidding rules.
Mid-band spectrum lag hits 5G users
TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database [subscription] notes that the lack of 3.5GHz licences has not stopped Polish MNOs launching 5G. Orange, Play, T-Mobile and Plus all switched on commercial networks between May and July 2020, using their existing spectrum holdings in the 2100MHz and 2600MHz bands. Among EU countries, only Poland and the Netherlands have failed to award 3.5GHz concessions to support 5G.
Opensignal recently found that Poland compares poorly with other Central and Eastern markets for 5G experience. The 5G download and upload speeds experienced by Polish users were much slower — average 5G download speeds are just 77.8Mbps — than in other nearby international markets.
However, there is going to be a lot of latent demand given Polish 5G users spend more time connected to 5G services than some of their CEE counterparts. Poland and the Netherlands are the only markets in the EU where the 3.5GHz band hasn’t been assigned to 5G services.
Polish operators are forced to use lower bands, such as 2.1GHz or 2.6GHz. As a result, the average amount of spectrum used for 5G connections that Opensignal users see is much smaller in Poland (34.9MHz) than in other CEE markets — and only around 20% more than that used for 4G connectivity on average (29.1MHz).