T-Mobile Austria acquired 110 MHz of spectrum throughout the country for a total price of €57 million
T-Mobile Austria received usage rights in the 3.4-3.8 GHz band on 7th March 2019 which provided the company the foundation to expand the 5G communications standard throughout Austria. In this auction, T-Mobile Austria acquired 110 MHz of spectrum throughout the country (11 packages of 10 MHz each in 12 regions), for a total price of €57 million.
Based on this spectrum, T-Mobile Austria activated 25 initial 5G base stations in all of Austria on March 26, 2019. These first 5G base stations are located in 17 rural municipalities and in 2 urban municipalities, Innsbruck (Tyrol) and Villach (Carinthia). The company has plans to add more 5G base stations as part of its mobile network over the course of the further build-out.
T-Mobile will be investing around a billion euros in total between 2018 and 2021 to guarantee that Austria has a powerful broadband infrastructure, both mobile and landline.”
T-Mobile Austria is relying on network diversity in its build-out strategy. In rural regions, 5G and LTE will bring fast internet everywhere. In suburban areas, hybrid and DSL will be added to provide fast internet. In cities, broadband internet will be provided by the fiber-optic network and other technologies.
The first 5G network in Austria is based on technology from Huawei which supplies essential components of T-Mobile’s 5G network.
The company will give special 5G routers to the first “friendly customers”. The first 5G smartphones are expected by the end of 2019. A greater variety of models and larger numbers of 5G-enabled smartphones and tablet PCs will likely hit the market in 2020.
