A Big News Week for Spectrum Auctions - Germany's 4G Auction

The other day, I wrote about India's 3G wireless auction. Turns out Germany has started auctioning off spectrum that will likely be used for LTE-based networks. The bidders include E-Plus, Telefonica O2, T-Mobile and Vodafone. It will be interesting to see how much the government makes from licensing the spectrum but it is likely to be much less than the 3G auctions that occurred in 2000, as times are much different now - the internet bubble had not quite burst yet.
 

What will be the impact of LTE on the consumer? It's speed of the experience. I have written in the past about LTE being roughly 20 times faster than 3G. With 3G technology improving, assume LTE is roughly 10 times faster than the latest 3G technologies. 10 times faster will certainly improve the data and video utilization in mobile devices and will spur the advance of mobile value added services with these devices. We will see more and different kinds of video applications, and we will see more video usage.