NBTC likely to auction HD digital TV licences first: source

The source added that the broadcasting panel intends to announce today details of the order in which the auctions will be held – rather than waiting until potential bidders submit bidding documentation on October 28-29.

The decision by the NBTC will enable potential bidders to easily draw up their bidding plans and ensure transparency in the NBTC’s handling of the auction. The broadcasting panel has tried to plug loopholes to prevent legal challenges, the source added.

NBTC broadcasting panel chairman Natee Sukonrat said the panel would consider today which of the four licence types – totalling 24 licences in all – would be auctioned on which days. The working panel has submitted two options for consideration, but he declined to elaborate. 

According to the NBTC source, there are two possible options. One option would be to first auction off licences for which the highest number of bidding-application documents had been picked up. However, the most likely option, according to the source, would be to auction the highest-priced licences first. 

The NBTC source said the option based on licence price would allow companies to bid for the licences they were seeking. 

While the SD variety channel licences will have the highest numbers of companies picking up documents, the broadcasting panel said it believed this did not reflect the real demand for this type of licence. It said it was more likely that most companies had picked up the SD variety licences as a back-up option in case they failed to win bids for the higher-priced HD licences, or the SD news channel licences.

If the NBTC auctions the SD variety licences first, the companies that really want HD licences might bid fiercely to ensure they have at least one licence in case they failed to win HD licences. 

If the panel selects the option based on the licence price, the seven HD variety channel licences, with a starting price of Bt1.510 billion per licence, would be auctioned on the first day. This would be followed by seven Standard Definition (SD) variety channel licences with a starting price of Bt380 million per licence on the second day. 

The seven SD news channel licences with the starting price of Bt220 million per licence would be auctioned in the third day, followed by the three SD children’s channel licences with a starting price of Bt140 million per licence on the last day.

If the panel decided to select the option to auction off licences with the most bidding applications, the SD variety channel licences would be auctioned first as 17 companies had picked up bidding documents for the licences. The HD variety and SD news channel licences would be auctioned in the following days as each of these two licence types had both received 12 bidding applications. The children’s channel licences would be auctioned on the last day as there were eight companies bidding for this licence type.

The panel also reserved the right to cancel the auction of any licence category, if the number of the bidders was lower, or matched the number of the available licences.