Spectrum Pricing and Renewals in Europe

Government decisions on spectrum pricing continue to impact mobile coverage and speeds. This latest report on spectrum pricing finds spectrum costs have risen sharply as a percentage of revenues, increasing the cost burden on operators and constraining critical network investments.

Digital infrastructure has been at the heart of social and economic progress in Europe for the better part of the last three decades. Today, nearly half a billion people across Europe are connected to the mobile internet, predominantly through high-speed 4G and 5G networks. Mobile technologies and services now generate around 5% of GDP across Europe, a contribution that amounts to almost $1.2 trillion of economic value added. 5G, in particular, is expected to benefit most sectors of the European economy, adding more than $160 billion of economic value by 2030.

European mobile markets are undergoing a structural shift: rising data usage, declining revenue per user, saturating subscriber penetration and sustained investment requirements have made operator scale increasingly important. Europe remains the least concentrated major mobile region in the world, with operators being structurally subscale compared to global peers. This gap has widened during precisely the period when scale matters most.