SmarTone bid HKD 640 million for two paired 5MHz blocks, China Mobile Hong Kong bought one spectrum block for HKD300 million, Genius Brand spent HKD290 million for a 2x5MHz block and CSL secured one paired 5MHz block for HKD310 million.
A spokesperson from the Office of the Communications Authority (OFCA) in Hong Kong said that the launch of 4G in 2011 has resulted in continued buoyancy in the mobile market.
“The assignment of 50MHz of radio spectrum through this auction will enable the successful bidders to deploy state of the art mobile broadband technologies and provide the necessary network capacities to further develop 4G services in Hong Kong,” the spokesperson said.
This is reportedly the eighth auction conducted in Hong Kong since 2001 and a new entrant, although unsuccessful, was said to have taken part.
“While all the provisional successful bidders in this spectrum auction are existing mobile network operators, the fact that a new entrant has participated in the auction demonstrates that even though the mobile telecommunications market in Hong Kong is extremely competitive, it continues to attract new investors," the spokesperson added.
These results follow a recent dispute in Hong Kong over government plans to sell operator’s allocated spectrum in a 3G auction.
