NBTC lays out seven-month time frame for auctions

The National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission plans to complete the auction of the 1,800-megahertz telecom spectrum within seven months of receiving the green light from the junta.

Takorn Tantasith, secretary-general of the NBTC, said recently that next month the commission would ask the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) for approval to open bidding for the 1,800MHz licences in July or August, to be followed by the 900MHz frequency of Advanced Info Service (AIS).

The new time frame was drafted last week for the auctions of the combined 1,800MHz bands of TrueMove and Digital Phone Co (DPC) as well as AIS’s 900MHz band.

The NBTC wanted to reallocate the bands this year, but the military regime ordered a suspension pending clarification of the plan. 

Private operators have urged the government to make these auctions happen as soon as possible so that they can enhance their fourth-generation wireless broadband service. 

The NBTC has set up a working team to study what other benefits the country could gain besides the huge revenue from the up-front licence payment and new network investment. The study should be ready by next month. Recently Total Access Communi-cation (DTAC) said it had entered talks with CAT Telecom to return the unused 25MHz portion of its 1,800MHz frequency to the NBTC for the auction together with the 1,800MHz frequency of TrueMove-DPC and the 900MHz frequency of AIS. The talks are still going on.

An NBTC source said the commission might prefer to auction the spectra of TrueMove, DPC and AIS first. If it includes the unused 25MHz, it will have to adjust the auction plan and might fail to complete the auction within the intended seven months.

The auction plan of the 1,800MHz of TrueMove-DPC had cleared the public-hearing step and was waiting only for the NBTC to approve it when it was suspended by the NCPO.

Takorn said there would be some changes in the draft plan for the 1,800MHz auction, including the details of reserve price and licence term. According to the existing draft, there will be two licences with 12.5MHz bandwidth each and an Bt11.6-billion starting reserve price. The licence term is 17 years.

The 900MHz auction plan is still waiting for a public hearing. Its existing reserve price is Bt8.44 billion for the 7.5MHz band and Bt11.26 billion for the remaining 10MHz band. They will have the same licence term of 15 years.