Spectra auction may happen next September: NBTC chairman
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The National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC)'s telecom committee is likely to auction the 1,800 megahertz (MHz) and 900MHz spectra together next September, telecom committee chairman Settapong Malisuwan said yesterday.
He added that the committee might specify in the auction that these two spectra would be for providing wireless broadband service using 3G and beyond-3G technologies.
The committee will make final decisions on these issues soon. It has already hired International Telecom Union (ITU) to advise on development of the plan to auction the 1,800MHz spectrum bands of TrueMove and Digital Phone Co (DPC), whose concessions expired in September this year. The NBTC intends to invite bids next September.
The ITU is expected to submit to the NBTC the results of the first phase of its study of the objectives of the auction, possibly by February or March.
The 900MHz spectrum belongs to Advanced Info Service (AIS), whose concession under TOT will expire in March 2015.
If the telecom committee decides to auction both the 1,800MHz and 900MHz spectra together, there will be 20MHz bandwidth in the 900MHz and 20MHz bandwidth from the 1,800MHz in the auction. Of the total 900MHz, 17.5MHz bandwidth will be from AIS, while the rest – the unused bandwidth – will be from the NBTC.
While both TrueMove and DPC owned 12.5MHz bandwidth of the 1,800MHz, totalling a combined 25MHz bandwidth, only 20MHz bandwidth of this quantity are technically appropriate to provide service when combined together for auction.
An NBTC source said that the NBTC might specify that the licence term to operate this 1,800MHz would be for 20 years, while the licence period for 900MHz will be 15 years.
Settapong added that Thailand may be able to switch off the conventional 2G cellular services earlier than expected. The 2G services in Thailand were expected to take 5 to 6 years to be switched off after the launch of the 3G-2.1GHz service early this year. However, it is now estimated that the 2G switch-off could happen even earlier as more and more mobile-phone users are migrating to 3G.
AIS has about 11 million 3G-2.1GHz subscribers, while Total Access Communication (DTAC) has about 5 million, and True Corp has about 7 million.
DTAC’s existing 2G concession contract will expire in 2018.
