German Bundesnetzagentur provides decision to extend mobile spectrum subject to conditions

On 24 March, 2025, the German Bundesnetzagentur announced its decision to extend the spectrum usage rights at 800 MHz, 1800 MHz, and 2600 MHz for an interim period of five years. This extension comes with specific conditions, including coverage obligations and other requirements.

Improving coverage and promoting competition

Klaus Müller, President of the Bundesnetzagentur, emphasised the dual goals of enhancing mobile coverage and fostering competition. The extension is tied to ambitious coverage obligations, particularly aimed at rural areas, to ensure equivalent living standards across urban and rural regions. By 2030, at least 99.5% of the country’s surface area must have coverage of at least 50 Mbps.

Five-year extension details

The spectrum usage rights, set to expire at the end of 2025, will be extended by five years. This aligns with other expiring usage rights aiming to prevent regulation-induced scarcity and consider market developments in future proceedings.

Strengthening rural areas

The extension includes obligations to further roll out mobile networks, focusing on uninterrupted mobile broadband coverage along transport routes. Key coverage requirements include:

• At least 50 Mbps for 99.5% of the country’s surface area by 2030.
• At least 100 Mbps for 99% of households in thinly populated municipalities by 2029.
• At least 100 Mbps for all federal roads by 2029.
• At least 50 Mbps for regional roads and inland waterways by 2029.
• At least 50 Mbps for district roads by 2030.

Mobile network operators must cooperate in establishing infrastructure along rail routes and negotiate with railway infrastructure undertakings for joint use.

Promoting competition

The Bundesnetzagentur has linked the extension to measures promoting competition. Mobile network operators must negotiate with service providers and mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) on sharing wireless capacity. These negotiations must be non-discriminatory and technology-neutral, guided by detailed provisions for effective negotiations. This continues the approach of the previous spectrum assignment proceeding in the 2019 spectrum auction. At the same time, legal challenges brought by mobile service providers against this previous spectrum award decision are still unresolved (for background, see our reporting in the September 2024 edition of this newsletter).

Future competitive proceedings

Along with the extension, BNetzA announced its intention to retender the extended spectrum at 800 MHz, 1800 MHz, and 2600 MHz at a later point in time (likely 2029), alongside other spectrums expiring in 2033, in a competitive procedure. Future coverage obligations will focus more on the quality of user experience, including minimum usable data rates and coverage inside buildings and vehicles. Innovative instruments like negative auctions will be used to improve rural coverage.

Market reactions

Reactions of market participants have been predictably mixed. The mobile network operators Telekom, Vodafone and Telefónica, who benefit from the extensions, have supported the extension, while industry associations of mobile service providers without networks have been critical (see summary of Handelsblatt in German).

At the same time, it is remarkable that the BNetzA decided to forego significant fiscal revenue (predicted to be several Billion EUR) in exchange for ensuring and improving network coverage. This happens at a time when the federal budget faces significant needs while the three spectrum auctions in the 2010s, which generated revenues of 16 Billion EUR in total, took place in an area of balanced federal budgets. To us, this matches a general recent political trend in Germany, the realisation that the balanced federal budgets of the 2010s came at the price of significant underinvestment in infrastructure.

The decision (in German) is available at: Bundesnetzagentur.