Korea’s Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning announced that KT had spent $813.7 million on 15MHz in the 1.8GHz frequency band.
SK Telecom and LG U+ reportedly took additional frequencies, in the 1.8GHz and 2.4GHz bands respectively, and the winning bids are said to have totalled nearly $2.2 billion.
Market watchers predict that the outcome of the auction will boost KT's position in the race for LTE-A technology, in which SK Telecom has been making significant progress this year.
An industry insider told local reporters that Korea has been working strategically to deliver high-quality services to subscribers in the country.
“We’ll invest more in our networks while striving to provide... content befitting the era of LTE,” the source said.
“Now the stage has been set for Korea to become a global LTE powerhouse by making use of the frequency networks. I hope that the government will continue its efforts to deal with problems like the lack of frequency resources and frequency fragmentation.”
In January this year, KT was eyeing a controlling stake in Maroc Telecom, but later in April the company dropped its interest, due to what it claimed was a high valuation.
