2.1GHZ auction to take place mid-October

It made the announcement to show that the auction would go ahead despite concern about a low level of competition in the bidding, and the possibility of collusion.
Eight of the NBTC’s 11 members yesterday voted to approve the final revised draft of the 2.1-gigahertz spectrum licensing terms and conditions. Two commissioners, Supinya Klangnarong and Prawit Leesata-pornwongsa, voted against out |of concern of that there could only |be three bidders going for a combined availability of 45 megahertz of bandwidth.
It is widely expected that just Advanced Info Service, Total Access Communication and True Corp will take part in the auction.
The draft allows each bidder to grab a maximum 15MHz of bandwidth, down from 20MHz bandwidth in the original draft, out of the 45MHz available in the auction.
NBTC member Natee Sukonrat declined to vote, citing his involvement in the licensing terms and conditions drawn up by the watchdog’s predecessor, the National Telecom-munications Commission (NTC), of which he was also a member.
NBTC secretary-general Takorn Tantasit said the agency would call for bidding any day between October 15 and 20.
The draft is expected to be published in the Royal Gazette next week, with the bidder invitation process starting next month. The watchdog has hired Power Auction as its auction consultant.
NBTC telecom committee chairman Settapong Malisuwan said the decision to allow up to 15MHz bandwidth per bid winner was aimed at ensuring that no bidder received too small an allocation, which would make it tough to compete with other successful bidders during the 15-year licence period.

COMPETITIVE
“There are likely to be only a few bidders taking part in the auction if the reserve price is too high. Our policy is to free up this spectrum bandwidth from us,” he said, while acknowledging that only three bidders are likely to take part.
Settapong reaffirmed that the spectrum-assignment stage would be the mechanism for ensuring a competitive auction.
The auction will feature two phases. First, the bidders will compete for targeted spectrum-slot numbers. Then, those with the highest price offers will be the first to select the desired spectrum ranges during the assignment stage.
The change to a 15MHz bandwidth cap has attracted criticism that is paves the way for possible collusion among three potential bidders to grab 15MHz each without having to genuinely compete.
The Thailand Development Research Institute’s vice president, Somkiat Tangkitvanit, recently expressed concern that in the absence of genuine competition in the bidding, the final spectrum price would not be much higher than the reserve price, which would mean the state coffers would not benefit to the desired extent.
The reserve price of Bt4.5 billion is significantly lower than the initially evaluated full price of Bt6.44 billion for 5MHz of bandwidth, he said.
The NBTC will call for bidding for nine slots of the spectrum, each containing 5MHz bandwidth. The bid winners must pay the first instalment within 90 days of the auction, up from 45 days in the original draft.
Settapong said the watchdog would move at full speed to make the auction happen. He expressed confidence that it would take place this time, as all technical and legal loopholes had been plugged.
The NTC’s 2.1GHz spectrum |auction planned for September 2010 was suspended by a Central Administrative Court injunction a few days before it was due to take place, after a request by CAT Telecom. This followed CAT’s court challenge to the NTC’s licensing authority.