Results of first-round bidding showed that Drillisch, which is vying to become Germany's fourth network operator, had submitted offers of more than 20 million euros (17.1 million pounds) for 10 of the 41 blocks of spectrum on offer.

By contrast, the three existing operators - Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone and Telefonica Deutschland - only put in minimum bids for the blocks they were interested in.

Taken together, first-round bids totalled 288 million euros.

(Reporting by Douglas Busvine; editing by Thomas Seythal)