The Korea Communications Commission on Wednesday held the country’s first wireless broadband spectrum auction, participated by all three mobile carriers, with the bidding scheduled to continue Thursday.

Two leading mobile carriers, SK Telecom and KT Corp., competed to take home the 1.8 gigahertz radio spectrum, while LG Uplus was the only carrier which applied for the 2.1 gigahertz radio spectrum auction. KCC, the state telecom regulator, had ruled out SKT and KT from participating in the bid for the 2.1 gigahertz range.

Wednesday’s final bid for the 1.8 gigahertz range was 492.1 billion won, while LG Uplus took home the 2.1 gigahertz range for 445.5 billion won, which is the minimum bidding price, said KCC officials.

There were no bidders for the 800 megahertz radio spectrum, but it is still open for bidding until the auction is over.

The three carriers were each given separate rooms to write down the company’s bidding price and the auction itself was governed by a team at the KCC. KCC officials passed the firm’s bidding price to one another.

Auctioning of the 2.1 gigahertz range was part of the revised radio regulation law passed by the National Assembly last June.

The main goal of introducing the auction system for the government was to pick the firm which could most efficiently use the radio spectrum depending on market valuation.

For the wireless service operators, the wireless spectrum is needed to deal with the rapidly increasing wireless data usage figure, mostly due to smartphone adoption, and to improve their services.

The 20 megahertz bandwidth of the 2.1 gigahertz range could be used for 3G communication services as well as 4G Long Term Evolution technologies. The licenses for the radio spectrums, including the 800 megahertz and 1.8 gigahertz ranges, will be given for 10 years.

By Cho Ji-hyun (sharon@heraldcorp.com)