remember? umts once also was called: "Unerwartete Mehreinnahmen für Trostlose Staatskassen".
recall old statistics: most expensive was germany: $46.1bill; the cheapest and shortest auction had austria: 832 million euros ($618m).
lte estimatet costs for network provider between €3 - 5bill.
1hz bandwidth, gerhard fettweis says, costs with umts ~€1000.

the auction for 700mhz actually was delayed for seven years, from 2001 to 2008 and that it is not true, that the bids were cheaper at that time, even when you take into account the economic decline of the $. it was more or less the same if you take the figures of 2001. so any lesson learned? guess not.

btw don't expect 100mgbit/s wireless data tansfer in europe earlier than 2017, you may get 35 - 50 around 2012 with lte, nowadays converted to 4g, but actually - as an oecd report points out

c) 3G LTE (Long Term Evolution)
The specification for 3G LTE, sometimes inaccurately called 4G, is based on 3G release 7 (OFDM
and MIMO) and will be finalised in 2007, for deployment between 2008 and 2015. It will allow rates up to
100 Mbps on the downlink in a 20 MHz radio channel bandwidth. | mobile multiple play: new service pricing and policy implications, oecd 2007

but the kick off meeting for the standardisation of 4,5 generation happened in april this year. yet all these prosper markets have actually different problems at the moment: will you pay for lte or for rice is the question jane zweig points out rightly.

for her a lot what comes out of the mobile corner is nothing but déjà vue.

politically, internationally, the old game.
wimax 802.16i, 802.16n?? where are you?
europe plays lte: role out between - optimistic estimations say: 2009, more realistic 2012, 13, 14 ...