NBTC panel votes to keep reserve price

Four of the five committee members also voted to lower the maximum bandwidth each bidder can grab to 15MHz, down from 20MHz in the original draft. The revised draft, if approved by the NBTC board, will also allow bid winners to pay the first instalment of the fee within 90 days of the auction, up from 45 days in the original draft.
The committee will submit this final draft for NBTC board approval  next Wednesday as the watchdog prepares to auction the much-needed 2.1GHz spectrum by mid-October. It will start inviting potential bidders next month.
NBTC commissioner Prawit Leesatapornwongsa said the board would have to vote on approval of this final draft.
Some scholars have expressed concerns that if the spectrum cap were lowered, it would lessen competition in the auction among three potential bidders, Advanced Info Service (AIS), Total Access Communication (DTAC) and True Corp, given that the watchdog will make available 45MHz bandwidth in the auction. Therefore, the reserve price should be raised to ensure competition if the maximum were lowered.
Prawit said he was the only committee member who did not approve maintaining the price and lowering the spectrum cap, believing the price is too low and might appear to favour the three potential bidders.

COMPETE BY QUOTING PRICE
Telecom committee chairman Settapong Malisuwan said the reserve price should not be changed as it had been set at this level since the start of the process. He added that the spectrum-assignment stage in the auction would be the mechanism to ensure bid competition. The bidders have to compete by quote the highest price first to be eligible to be the first to select their desired commercially and technically viable spectrum blocks.
Information and Communications Technology Minister Anudith Nakornthap said yesterday that the unchanged reserve price would benefit consumers. If the price were too high, the bid winners were likely to pass the cost on to consumers.
A telecom analyst said the lower spectrum cap appeared to bring a win-win situation to the three potential bidders.
The NBTC will call the bid for nine spectrum slots, each with 5MHz bandwidth. The auction will feature two stages, first bidding for desired slot numbers, and then the firm making the highest offer will be the first to select desired blocks.
Settapong said the first three blocks were technically the most desirable as they were not adjacent to the other six blocks and would not suffer any signal interference.
Some telecom operators said in the draft hearing last month that the reserve price should not be too high as they wanted to save cash to spend on the establishment of their third-generation cellular networks. True voiced concern that the cap of 20MHz bandwidth would enable only cash-rich bidders to clinch huge chunks of the spectrum to dominate the market at expense of smaller firms.
DTAC chief executive officer Jon Eddy Abdullah said the changes from the original draft had been expected. He added that there was a possibility of a fourth bidder with a desire to pick up one block, but this was challenging market given its maturity.
AIS CEO Wichian Mektrakarn said his company would have no technical problem with any spectrum blocks it wins, and the most important thing was that the NBTC had to make the auction happen.