3G auction to offer nine 5MHz slots

 

Settapong Malisuwan, chairman of the NBTC telecom committee, said yesterday the subcommittee has decided to cap the total bandwidth available to each bidder at 20MHz. The NBTC owns a total of 45MHz of bandwidth on the 2.1GHz spectrum.

The NBTC will auction the spectrum using the simultaneous ascending bid method, which allows participants to bid for all spectrum lots at the same time. Bidders can continue to place higher bids until the auction ends. Many countries use this simple method.

Cash-rich bidders are expected to be able to afford to grab the maximum 20MHz bandwidth. 

An NBTC source said the subcommittee was concerned that if it set the maximum bandwidth at 15MHz – which would have meant making three licences available – the three incumbent telecom operators might have colluded to grab equal bandwidths of 15MHz each. However, the maximum bandwidth cap of 20MHz can be changed after a public hearing to ensure fair market competition, the source said.

Advanced Info Service chief executive officer Wichian Mektrakarn said yesterday that AIS would go for the maximum bandwidth. Earlier, TrueMove urged the NBTC to cap the total bandwidth available to each bidder at 15MHz.

Settapong said the subcommittee is still considering whether winners will pay the auction licence payment on a one-off basis or in instalments. 

He said the subcommittee would finalise the details of the auction soon and submit them for the NBTC telecom committee’s approval at the end of this month. They would then be submitted to the NBTC’s board, before a public hearing is held. The auction is expected to take place around October.

There will be no N-1 condition applied in the auction. Such a condition would have seen the NBTC auction three licences if there were at least four bidders, two licences if three bidders, one licence if two bidders and drop the auction if there was one bidder.

The NBTC’s telecom committee is also working out the licence reserve price, which is expected to be decided at the end of this month. The reserve price is the price level the NBTC thinks is appropriate.

In a related matter, the telecom committee yesterday gave approval to TrueMove and Total Access Communication to test-provide 4G service on Long-term Evolution (LTE) technology, using 1,800MHz blocks.

The committee also approved the request of a subcommittee probing the legality of the 3G service partnership deals between CAT Telecom and True Corp to extend its deadline by another 15 days, as it failed to finish the probe in the scheduled 45 days. The subcommittee can request a second 15-day extension of the deadline.