Eight firms snap up bid papers for commercial digital TV auction
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On the first day of bid-document selling yesterday, eight companies purchased a total of 11 application documents for joining the spectrum auction of 24 commercial digital-TV licences.
The auction is being overseen by the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission.
Natee Sukonrat, chairman of the NBTC’s broadcasting committee, said most of the companies were current players in terrestrial- and satellite-TV business.
“We want to see qualified winners in the coming bidding for the commercial digital-TV licences. It is good to see existing TV broadcasters show up,” he said.
The eight companies purchasing bid-application documents to date are Bangkok Broadcasting and Television, the operator of Channel 7; BBTV Satelvision; Rose Media Entertainment; Post TV; GMM HD Digital; GMM SD Digital; Touch TV; and BEC-Multimedia.
Rose Media Entertainment and BEC Multimedia will bid for licences for children’s channels, while Post TV and BEC-Multimedia will bid for news channels.
BBTV Satelvision, Touch TV, GMM SD Digital TV and BEC-Multimedia will bid for variety channels in standard definition (SD) service, while Bangkok Broadcasting and Television, GMM HD Digital TV and BEC-Multimedia will go for variety channels in high definition (HD).
BEC-Multimedia, which is a sister company of Bangkok Entertainment – the operator of Channel 3 – was the biggest spender yesterday, taking four bid documents home.
However, Natee said he assumed BEC’s strategy would be to examine the details of each application, before making a final decision on which licences to bid for.
He added that under the auction rules, each bidder would be allowed to apply for only three licences, in order to prevent a media monopoly by giant companies.
The NBTC has reserved 24 licences for commercial digital TV channels. Of the total, seven licences each are for variety HD and SD channels, another seven for news, and three for children’s programmes.
More companies are expected to show up and buy the Bt1.07-million documents this week. The first day of bid-document selling ended with Bt11.77 million in revenue for the NBTC.
The application period has been set for October 28-29, with qualified bidders being named within 45 days after the closure of applications.
All qualified bidders will be informed about details of the auction, and a mock-up auction will be held within 15 days of the bidders being short-listed.
The spectrum auction will begin within 30 days of the final lists of qualified bidders in each licence category being announced.
