Title: Pricing the shift towards 5G technology: economic drivers of spectrum prices in Europe

Authors: Aleksander Mercik; Tomasz Słoński

Addresses: Wroclaw University of Economics and Business, Komandorska 118/120, 53-345 Wroclaw, Poland ' Wroclaw University of Economics and Business, Komandorska 118/120, 53-345 Wroclaw, Poland

Abstract: Recent studies have found that the mobile industry increases its contribution into a development of the world's economy. Setting a fair price for a frequency band reservation becomes an important task for national market regulators. This paper demonstrates that macroeconomic data are key determinants of prices paid for frequency band reservations in auctions organised in Europe. In an empirical analysis, we identified a positive link between log(price of 1 MHz) and log(GDP) and a negative link between log(price of 1 MHz) and log(unemployment rate). To ensure that our results are robust to the choice of the model type, we implemented two estimation methods and used two samples.

Keywords: mobile communications; mobile industry; spectrum management; spectrum pricing; spectrum auction; mo-bile networks; 5G technology; frequency band reservation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMC.2023.133094

International Journal of Mobile Communications, 2023 Vol.22 No.3, pp.259 - 277

Accepted: 18 Aug 2021
Published online: 01 Sep 2023 *

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