Back on April 15th, I wrote about Germany's spectrum auction for the spectrum beyond 3G, likely to be used for LTE. The auction ended a couple of weeks ago netting a price tag of 4.38B Euros, much less than the recent $14.5B auction of 3G spectrum in India and much less than the 50B Euro 3G auction in Germany from the year 2000.
The price tag is seen a sign of the times. $50B was a lot for the operators to pay for 3G. Given that, and given the state of the world and European economy right now, 4.38B is what was netted. Still, that low a number was a bit of a surprise to some in EMEA and the feeling is that the LTE winners will clearly be able to monetize this. How will they monetize this - well the mobile broadband will create many opportunities for data, video and voice. And likely we'll see very innovative apps be created with this awesome mobile broadband power available.
