Five Belgian providers are allowed to participate in the country’s 5G frequency auction this summer. So there is a good chance that in addition to the three major providers Proximus, Orange and Telenet, a fourth provider will become active in the country.

Five candidates have been registered for the auction, all five have been declared accepted by the BIPT Organizer, Write it in a statement† No service providers are known, but the major operators Proximus, Orange Belgium and Telenet/Base are most likely among them. according to the time Citymesh may also participate. This is part of the Cegeka ICT group.

The auction is not only about 2G, 3G and 4G frequencies, but also the 5G frequency that all the candidates are competing for as well. This happened to both the 700MHz band, with which to set up national coverage, and the 3.80GHz band, which is mainly aimed at capacity. For the other bands on the 900, 1800, and 2100MHz bands, all five candidates also participated, but only three on the 1400MHz band.

The broadband auction will start in Belgium in June this year. Deployment of the 5G network was delayed for years because the federal government and states could not agree on how to distribute the revenue from the licenses, estimated at around 800 million euros. In 2019, it was decided to split those costs later after the auction.