The Dominican Republic expects its upcoming 5G auction to generate between US$200 million and US$300 million, according to Nelson Arroyo, the president of regulator Indotel (Instituto Dominicano de las Telecomunicaciones).
The mooted amount is aimed at setting expectations for potential newcomers to the country’s mobile market, with registration for the upcoming auctions open to interested parties until May. Indotel is keen to attract new operators to the market, with the country’s wireless penetration rate sitting at just above 80% as of September last year.
As reported by CommsUpdate, the 5G auctions will see spectrum sold across several bands, with nine 2×5MHz blocks of 700MHz spectrum available alongside 16 10MHz blocks of 3.5GHz spectrum. All concessions will be valid for 20 years.
Indotel had affirmed its goal of being one of the first markets across the Latin America & Caribbean region to auction 5G spectrum, but as noted by TeleGeography, it was beaten to the punch by Chile. The country’s regulator Subtel this month concluded its final tiebreaker auction for 5G spectrum in the 3.5GHz band, having recently auctioned 700MHz, 26GHz and AWS spectrum.