NBTC vows no loopholes in 3G auction
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The National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) has promised to plug any possible legal loopholes relating to the planned auction of the much-awaited 2.1-gigahertz spectrum licences to discourage attempts by ill-intentioned parties to d
NBTC commissioner Suthiphon Thaveechaiyagarn made the agency’s intent clear as a guest speaker at a recent seminar on the legal aspects of the watchdog’s master plans and the 3G spectrum auction. The event was hosted by Phatra Securities Plc.
He said the commission would ask potential bidders to vow that they would bid for the licences on a transparent basis.
The NBTC intends to auction the 2.1GHz licenses in either the third or fourth quarter to provide 3G broadband cellular service. Its spectrum management master plan and the telecom and broadcasting master plans were published in the Royal Gazette last week, enabling it to move full steam ahead to auction the spectrum licences.
Suthiphon expected the NBTC’s subcommittee assigned to draft the auction plan would finish the details before the Songkran festival, which starts on Friday.
The watchdog has considered many options, including auctioning licences providing 5 megahertz of bandwidth each, licences providing 10MHz, or those providing a combination of 5 and 10MHz bandwidths. The NBTC owns a total 45 MHz of bandwidth on the 2.1GHz spectrum.
The commissioner was confident that the NBTC is fully authorised to auction the new spectrum licences, based on the 2010 Frequency Allocation Law.
The now-defunct National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) was poised to auction the 2.1GHz licences in September 2010, but the plan was suspended by a Central Administrative Court injunction the same month, after CAT Telecom challenged the NTC’s licensing authority. The court is conducting a judicial review of the case.
Suthiphon added that once the NBTC finished drafting the regulations for allocating the 2.1GHz licences, it would ask the court to dispose of CAT’s case against the NTC in order to clear all legal cases and pave the way for the NBTC’s auctioning of the licences.
