NBTC wants to widen field and see more operators bidding for 3G-2.1GHz licence

It has also considered revising some of its regulations and issuing some new network-related licences to encourage local and foreign operators to participate in the auction.

Settapong Malisuwan, chairman of the NBTC’s telecom committee, said yesterday that some members of the 2.1GHz spectrum management subcommittee believe that if there are only three bidders, that would be too few.

The three incumbent telecom operators – Advanced Info Service, Total Access Communication (DTAC) and True group – are all expected to bid for the licences to provide third-generation wireless broadband service.

The NBTC subcommittee convened for the first time yesterday to prepare the terms and conditions of the 2.1GHz licensing plan.

Settapong said the plan would be finished in the next two or three months to enable the watchdog to meet its goal of auctioning the spectrum licences by late in the third quarter of this year. 

The subcommittee will convene three times a week. 

Settapong said the NBTC might revise its infrastructure-sharing regulations to facilitate newcomers acquiring 2.1GHz licences, by allowing them easy access to existing telecom networks. This would encourage a larger number of firms to take part in the bidding, given that they would not have to start from scratch setting up 3G networks at huge cost but could share infrastructure with the incumbent operators, thus enabling them to get the service off the ground quickly. With the barriers to entry to the market thus lowered, this would lead to actual 3G competition.

The NBTC might have to issue  special licences for operators to lease their networks to others, such as future 3G licence-holders. 

The commission has a total of 45 megahertz of bandwidth in the 2.1GHz spectrum. Settapong said one licence should contain a minimum bandwidth of 15MHz. 

The subcommittee is yet to decide whether all of the bandwidth will be auctioned off or the NBTC should hold on to some of it.

The subcommittee will base the licensing plan on the auction rules set out by the now-defunct National Telecommuni-cations Commission (NTC). 

The NBTC will also appoint a working committee to study the economic aspects of the licensing.

The NTC had planned to auction the 2.1GHz spectrum licences in September 2010 but the auction was suspended by a Central Administrative Court injunction, as requested by CAT Telecom, which challenged the commission’s licensing authority. 

The NTC’s auction rules set the starting price of a 2.1GHz licence at Bt12.8 billion. 

There was also the N-1 rule, which meant the NTC would grant three licences if there were two bidders, one licence if two bidders, and cancel the auction if there was only one bidder.