Court questions 3G bid winners on free, fair competition
The Central Administrative Court yesterday asked the three companies that won slots of the 2.1-gigahertz spectrum in last month's bandwidth auction if there was free and fair competition, as queried by the Ombudsman two weeks ago.
The Ombudsman had petitioned the court to hold an inquiry on the issue, and the court questioned the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission’s telecom committee last week.
The three bid winners are Advanced Wireless Network of Advanced Info Service (AIS), DTAC Network of Total Access Communications, and True Corp’s Real Future.
Telecom industrialists have been waiting to see if the NBTC can go ahead and issue licences for use of the 2.1GHz spectrum, which will be used to provide third-generation cellular service, amid the legal challenges.
AIS’ share price yesterday closed at Bt191.50, down 3.28 per cent, while that of DTAC dropped 1.49 per cent to Bt82.75. True’s share price dropped 1.24 per cent to Bt4.76.
The Ombudsman also sought a court injunction to halt the licensing temporarily.
In a related matter, Senator Paiboon Nititawan yesterday said that next week he would petition the Ombudsman to ask the Constitution Court to consider whether the 2010 Frequency Allocation Law is unconstitutional, as it authorised the NBTC’s two committees – telecom and broadcasting – to act on behalf of the commission as a whole.
He claimed that the Constitution empowered only a single independent body, the NBTC, to allocate spectra.
A group of senators, including Paiboon, made a joint petition last month to the Ombudsman against the telecom committee’s approval of the outcome of the October 16 2.1GHz spectrum auction, claiming that only the NBTC board had authority to approve the results. However, the Ombudsman declined to consider the case, saying it was beyond its purview to probe the committee’s authority.
The telecom committee also set up a panel of its own to investigate whether there was collusion among the three bid winners. That probe is to be completed by Sunday.
The telecom committee held the 2.1GHz spectrum auction on October 16 and endorsed the outcome two days later. Recently, NBTC secretary-general Takorn Tantasit said that if there were no court order to halt the licensing and if the commission’s panel did not find evidence of collusion, the telecom committee would press ahead and grant the licences to the bid winners.
Under the terms of the auction, it has to issue the licences within 90 days of approval of the outcome.
