Publications
Publications
- August 2023
- Telecommunications Policy
The 5G Spectrum Auction in Chile
By: Juan Escobar, Rafael Epstein, Jose Correa, Pamela Gidi, Jozsef Markovits, Natalie Epstein, Yerko Montenegro and Abner Turkieltaub
Abstract
In 2021, the Chilean government implemented a first-price package auction to allocate electromagnetic spectrum for 5G mobile services. The auction was run sequentially for different spectrum bands, allowing firms to exploit band complementarities. It was a combinatorial auction, so firms could bid for any combination of blocks within a band. It contemplated spectrum caps – upper limits on the spectrum for each firm – to ensure competitiveness. The beauty contests used in previous processes became obsolete, as there was a need to promote competitiveness and transparency in the telecommunication sector. Four incumbents and one potential entrant participated in the auction. The auction raised more than USD $450 million, which was six times more than the sum of the revenues of all previous contests in the country. We discuss this experience and show how different aspects of the context justified our design choices.
Keywords
Citation
Escobar, Juan, Rafael Epstein, Jose Correa, Pamela Gidi, Jozsef Markovits, Natalie Epstein, Yerko Montenegro, and Abner Turkieltaub. "The 5G Spectrum Auction in Chile." Art. 102580. Telecommunications Policy 47, no. 7 (August 2023).