Auction of TV licences to be delayed
The auction of 24 commercial terrestrial digital TV licences will be delayed by about a month from August or September as planning has been taking more time than expected.
"So the auction process is expected to take place in September or October," Natee Sukonrat, chairman of the broadcasting committee under the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission, said yesterday.
Today the NBTC will approve the draft rules for the auction and post them on its website for 15 days for public feedback before holding a public hearing within 30 days.
The final rules will be published in the Royal Gazette in July or August, then the NBTC will take about two months to complete the preliminary procedures, including inviting bidders and qualifying them.
Among the key details are the starting price for each licence and the auction and payment methods. Each licence category will be auctioned separately and on different days. Each auction must be completed within one hour. If the number of bidders offering the highest prices is greater than the number of available licences, the NBTC will add five-minute rounds until there are winners for each licence category.
The successful bidders will have the privilege of selecting their channel number and network provider on top of getting a service licence and the right to hold a frequency, Natee said.
The channel numbers for commercial TV broadcasts range from 13-36, while channels 1-12 are reserved for public TV. Children’s channels are 13-15, news channels 16-22, variety channels 23-29 and high-definition (HD) variety channels 30-36.
The NBTC expects to earn at least Bt15.19 billion from the sale of licences.
The starting prices are set at Bt1.51 billion for each of seven HD variety channels, Bt380 million for each of seven non-HD variety channels, Bt220 million for each of seven news channels and Bt140 million for each children’s channel.
