German regulatory authority spectrum auction fails achieving its goals

Right now as I am writing this, the German federal regulatory authority for networks (Bundesnetzagentur) is running an auction for many frequencies in the 800MHz, 1.8GHz, 2GHz and 2.6GHz spectrums.

Officially they claim that the purpose for those frequencies is to improve broadband coverage and close the white spots on Germany's map where no broadband Internet access coverage exists today.

And how do they think to achieve this? By giving nation-wide licenses on that spectrum to the existing cellphone operators.

That's nothing but a contradiction in terms. If they were really serious about closing the so-called white spots on the broadband coverage map, they should give licenses not on federal, not even on state but on municipality level.

The large operators have no interest in bringing coverage into areas that are only sparsely populated. They want to get the largest number of subscriber with the least investment in their (overpriced) infrastructure.

Only small, local or regional companies have an actual interest in improving the broadband coverage in their own region. They understand their local market, they are in contact with the population and regional businesses. They can use much cheaper equipment since they are not part of a large inflexible traditional operator.

However, without providing smaller-areas licenses in any part of the useful spectrum, the German regulatory authority fails to even give a chance to such small/regional companies.

It all smells like the regulatory officials have been bought by the existing carriers/operators. There seems no reasonable other explanation to me.