On February 12, 2014 the Italian Ministry for Economic Development started a competitive bid for the assignment of the usage rights for three DTT national frequencies.
Interested operators will have to submit their application to participate in the bid within 60 days (i.e. March 14, 2014).
As already discussed in our previous posts (see here and here), this is a great (and long awaited!) opportunity for new comers or investment funds wishing to set up a network operator in Italy, considering that:
- the existing DTT network operators that already hold three or more multiplexes (Mediaset, RAI and Telecom Italia, i.e. the major Italian network operators) are excluded from the bid, while Sky Italia can only compete for one of the available multiplexes. Accordingly, there will be no competition from the main Italian players; and
- the starting price for each of the multiplexes is low (compared to the previous bids), i.e. Euro 29,300,000 for the first multiplex, Euro 29,824,000 for the second multiplex and Euro 31,625,000 for third multiplex (prices vary depending upon the estimated coverage of the relevant frequency).
Feel free to contact me, Alessandro Ferrari (alessandro.ferrari@dlapiper.com), if you wish to discuss.
