The Polish 700 and 800 MHz Spectrum Auction: Insights and Global Lessons
Poland’s final low-band spectrum auction marks a pivotal moment in Europe’s 5G rollout, offering key lessons in auction design, cross-border coordination, and strategic spectrum management.
In March 2025, Poland’s Office of Electronic Communications (UKE) concluded a landmark spectrum auction, allocating six 2 × 5 MHz blocks in the 700 MHz band and one 2 × 5 MHz block in the 800 MHz band. As one of the final major low-band auctions in the European Union, this event serves not only as a national milestone but also as a capstone to Europe’s coordinated decade-long reallocation of sub-1 GHz spectrum to support next-generation mobile services, particularly 5G.
Key Auction Outcomes
- Auction Structure: The auction followed a Simultaneous Multi-Round Ascending (SMRA) format and concluded in just two days with winning bids only 3.6% above the reserve prices, suggesting a low-competition environment or effective price anchoring.
- Operators and Allocations: Four major operators participated, with Orange and P4 securing two blocks each, while T-Mobile and Polkomtel secured just one. This outcome raised questions about potential strategic bidding miscalculations or deliberate cost-saving tactics, especially given that a single 2×5 MHz block is generally viewed as suboptimal for 5G deployment.
- Price Uniformity: Despite potential interference differences between blocks, prices remained nearly uniform, pointing to limited bidder differentiation between spectrum positions.
Related insights
Strategic and Technical Considerations
- Exposure Risk: The use of 2×5 MHz lots increased the risk of operators being “stranded” with an unprofitable allocation if they failed to secure adjacent blocks. This scenario likely affected T-Mobile and Polkomtel, and underscores the need for careful auction design to minimize such risks.
- Cross-Border Interference: Ongoing usage of adjacent frequencies by broadcasters in Ukraine and Belarus presents interference risks. While Poland has pursued coordination with Ukraine, Belarus remains a significant challenge.
- Deployment Risks: T-Mobile’s combined holding of 700 and 800 MHz may lead to passive intermodulation (PIM) interference, complicating efforts to deploy advanced low-band MIMO technologies without additional engineering mitigation.
Broader European and Global Lessons
Drawing from this and similar European auctions, the report outlines several critical insights for spectrum regulators and telecom operators worldwide:
- Market Readiness Matters: Spectrum should be released in line with device availability, market maturity, and network readiness to ensure successful integration into existing and future mobile infrastructure.
- Holistic Spectrum Management: Regulators are encouraged to adopt a band-agnostic approach to sub-1 GHz spectrum—700, 800, and 900 MHz are increasingly seen as interchangeable, allowing for more flexible and efficient network planning.
- Reserve Pricing Strategy: High reserve prices have led to auction failures in some countries (e.g., Romania). Poland’s moderate pricing approach is presented as a model for striking a balance between revenue generation and market viability.
- Support for Secondary Markets: The ability to trade or lease spectrum post-auction (as seen in the UK and Netherlands) allows operators to optimize holdings and avoid inefficiencies from suboptimal auction outcomes.
- Creative Rural Coverage Policies: As deep rural coverage is costly and prone to natural monopolies, solutions such as national roaming agreements or coverage-linked discounts are recommended.
- Technology Neutrality: Licenses should permit spectrum use across current and future technologies (4G, 5G, 6G), promoting long-term efficiency and adaptability.
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