Austria's Constitutional Court has ruled that for now Deutsche
Telekom AG's (DTE.XE) Austrian unit has to pay for frequencies it
bought in October on time, even though an appeal process against
the auction itself is not yet concluded, T-Mobile Austria GmbH said
Monday.
Deutsche Telekom's Austrian subsidiary T-Mobile paid around 654
million euros ($896 million) for nine frequency packets, which was
almost three times what analysts had expected.
T-Mobile has since asked for a renewed auction, and wanted the
due date for the payment postponed. The company complained that a
lack of transparency lead to inflated prices.
T-Mobile said Monday it has paid the outstanding fee of EUR654
million on time. The mobile operator added that the court decision
is no indicator of the final decision on the appeal against the
auction itself, and expects a final decision will be made next
year.
In October, the Austrian Telecom Control Commission auctioned
mobile spectrums to three bidders for a total of EUR2.01 billion.
The other bidders apart from T-Mobile Austria were Telekom Austria
AG (TKA.VI) and Hutchison (HUWHY).
Hutchison is also taking action against the results of the
auction.
Write to Stefanie Haxel at stefanie.haxel@wsj.com
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