Winners of 2.1GHz auction pick up their 3G licences

 Among them were Advanced Info Service (AIS) vice chairman Somprasong Boonyachai, Total Access Communication (DTAC) chief executive officer Jon Eddy Abdullah and True Corp CEO Suphachai Chearavanont.
“Today is a very good day for Thailand and Thai consumers. Under the leadership of the NBTC and the ICT Ministry, Thailand now charges ahead,” Abdullah said.
The three bid winners have already requested from the watchdog a combined 20 million mobile-phone numbers with the 091 prefix for providing the 3G service during the first year.
The NBTC, which is considering the companies’ requests, is likely to allocate the numbers in March, as they are expected to launch the 3G service in April. The fee is Bt1 per number per month.
The three winners in the commission’s 2.1GHz spectrum auction held in October are AIS’s Advanced Wireless Network, DTAC subsidiary DTAC Network, and True Corp’s Real Future.
Advanced Wireless was expected to request 10 million 3G numbers from the watchdog.
NBTC chairman Thares Punsri signed the 2.1GHz spectrum licences and telecom business licences yesterday, enabling the three firms to operate this type of business. Both types of licence have a 15-year term, starting from December 7.
Thares added that next year the NBTC would focus on the plan to auction the 1,800-megahertz spectrum for the provision of fourth-generation service.

STRICT COMPLIANCE
Meanwhile, NBTC secretary-general Takorn Tantasit said the 3G licence holders had to comply strictly with key conditions attached to the licences.
The first of these is the requirement that they establish networks covering 50 per cent of the population within two years of obtaining the licences, rising to 80 per cent of the population in the following two years.
Second, the companies have to comply with regulations governing the speed of their mobile data transmission, and third, they must comply with standards governing telecom service quality.
The other key requirement is that they must each set voice and data service tariffs at a rate 15 per cent lower than the average fees of all operators in the market on December 7. The NBTC is calculating the benchmark price for the three companies.
Takorn believes that all three licence holders will be able to establish their networks in major cities within a few months and complete coverage of 50 per cent of the population within the first year.
He added that the 3G licence holders also had to comply strictly with the NBTC’s 2006 regulations governing the standard mobile-phone service contract, which prohibit all telecom operators from setting the validity periods in their prepaid service.
If they want to fix the validity periods, they have to seek the watchdog’s permission to do so in advance.
The Central Administrative Court last month declined to issue an injunction as a result of TrueMove’s petition against the NBTC’s order that mobile-phone operators cannot fix the validity periods of their prepaid service and the imposition of daily fines of Bt100,000 until they cancel the periods.
However, the court did accept the TrueMove case into judicial review.
Meanwhile, the NBTC will pass half of the total final up-front fee it gained from the spectrum auction, plus interest, to the Finance Ministry today.
This amounts to Bt22.269 billion and interest of Bt55 million, but Bt40 million will be deducted for the cost of the auction before the sum is passed to the ministry.