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You had a similar spectrum auction with 5G recently and that got very expensive as well. That seems to be a problem in a lot of Europe and something the hardware providers like Ericsson complains about as that hinders the service providers ability to buy things from them because they spend so much money on the auction.

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It's telling that only the four biggest providers in Germany were able to take part in the auction because of how expensive it is. Not a lot of companies can throw billions at some spectrum before even building any towers or other infrastructure. It really distorts the market and makes it far less competitive.

The difference between Sweden and Germany in terms of RF spectrum license auctions has typically been:

Sweden goes for "beauty auctions" - a balance between coverage and government revenue.

Germany goes for government revenue alone.

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