New updates have come out on Taiwan’s 5G spectrum auction on 15 January. The first stage on deciding the number of blocks for the operators is completed after 261 rounds of bidding within 27 days. Total bids reached 138.081 billion TWD, involving five mobile operators. The second stage, a location-based auction, will begin by the end of February, when the operators are expected to negotiate for specific frequencies within the spectrum bands. The bidding might be resumed with another potential price raise if they are unable to reach agreement then.

According to the outcome of the first stage, fierce competition for the 3.5GHz band occurred due to the maturer technologies in the devices and its popular use in international markets. For only the 3.5GHz band, the total bidding price reached as high as 136.433 billion TWD, which is 461.5 % more than the government reserve price. The second most popular band is 28GHz with the total bidding price of 1.648 billion TWD. There were no bids for the 1800MHz band.

The Taiwanese regulator National Communications Commission (NCC) has planned 24 combinations of location for 3.5GHz and 28GHz band respectively. In the second stage of the auction held on 21 February, the position of frequencies for winning operators will be determined. After the winning operators complete administrative process and work on the network setup, they might be able to start running 5G services to the public in Q3 or Q4 this year.