NBTC to appeal if court orders injunction in 3G licence case

Takorn Tantasit, secretary-general of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC), said that if the court decides to admit the Ombudsman’s petition for judicial review and issues an injunction to suspend the NBTC process of granting the 2.1GHz spectrum licences to the three bid winners, the watchdog would consider appealing the injunction.
He added that if the NBTC has to draw up new auction terms, the whole process would take at least six months to complete.
If the court admits the petition for judicial review but declines to suspend the licensing, the NBTC’s telecom committee will have to consider whether to go ahead with the licensing process. He said that in that scenario, the three bid winners might hesitate to roll out the 3G networks at full steam, given the case has yet to reach finality.
If the court dismisses the case, the NBTC will proceed to grant the licences. He believes the three bid winners can finish the network rollout in major cities within six months after obtaining the licences.
The NBTC’s telecom committee will also urge them to complete their plans to offer low cost 3G service for its consideration. The committee will also rush to impose the infrastructure-sharing regulations. It will also draft the network interconnection charge regulations to be used among the three bid winners and will prepare to auction the 1,800-megahertz spectrum sometime next year.
The Ombudsman petitioned the Central Administrative Court on November 8 that the 2.1GHz spectrum auction lacked free and fair competition, as required by the Constitution and the 2010 Frequency Allocation Law. It also sought the court’s injunction to suspend the 2.1GHz spectrum licensing. The court has already heard the parties involved in the case over the past few weeks.
The NBTC held the spectrum auction on October 16 and approved the bid outcome on October 18. As per the auction terms, it will grant the licences to the bid winners – Advanced Wireless Network, DTAC Network, and Real Future – within 90 days after its endorsement of the bid outcome.
In a separate matter, Takorn said that the NBTC’s panel had reached a conclusion last Friday on whether BFKT (Thailand) of True Corp had breached the 2001 Telecom Business Act by operating without a telecom licence. However, he declined to elaborate. He will submit the panel’s conclusion for the telecom committee’s consideration today.
BFKT has rented the 3G-850MHz network equipment to CAT Telecom to generate 3G bandwidth for wholesale and resale under the existing CAT-True 3G service partnership contract.