Paris (AFP)
Secretary of State for the Economy Agnès Pannier-Runacher on Monday qualified as "balanced price" and "not indecent" the reserve price set at 2.17 billion euros for the allocation of frequencies 5G in response the discontent of the operators after the announcement made by the government.
"We make sure to have a balanced price, which is not indecent," she said on Radio Classique. "It is the CPT (Commission of the participations and transfers) which fixed the price, an administrative authority which evaluates the patrimony of the French every time one makes a privatization." The analysis of the CPT is that it's worth 2.17 billion euros and we are standing at that price for the moment, "said Pannier-Runacher.
Specifically, the four operators with a network of its own, Bouygues Telecom, Free, Orange and SFR, will initially pay 350 million euros each to benefit from a first block of 50 megahertz (MHz) frequencies. Then the rest of the available frequencies will be auctioned.
"In Germany, the last entrant had the same block for 700 million euros," said Secretary of State. "Our vision was to ensure a minimum of blocks allowing each of the players to be present, to compete and not be excluded from the market 200 MHz of public service base and 110 MHz to the competition, that we seems particularly balanced ".
"The four big operators are very familiar with the rules of the game, they would have preferred blocks of 40 MHz," continued Pannier-Runacher. "The operators make their strategic choices according to the means at their disposal," she added.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority (Arcep), which was campaigning for a low reserve price to allow all operators to compete, had asked that the reserve price be fixed at 1.5 billion euros.
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