900MHz auction date back to Dec
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THE NATIONAL Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission's telecom committee yesterday resolved to put off the auction of 900MHz licences to the original date of December 15 instead of November 12, citing the need to ensure transparency and meaningful
The auction date for two licences on the 1,800-megahertz spectrum remains unchanged at November 11.
The telecom committee made the resolution at an urgent meeting yesterday, and the decision took the market by surprise.
The NBTC expects that the change in the 900MHz auction date will prompt meaningful competition among the four bidders at the 1,800MHz auction, which will bring in more money for the government from upfront fees.
A telecom analyst said he doubted that the auction of the two 900MHz licences would be postponed again in the future.
But he agreed that the date change for the 900MHz auction would spark fierce competition among the four bidders for the 1,800MHz licences. They might not want to wait to vie for the 900MHz licences in December but will fight to grab 1,800MHz licences first.
The same four companies are qualified to bid for the 1,800MHz and 900MHz licences. They are Advanced Wireless Network of Advanced Info Service (AIS), DTAC TriNet of Total Access Communication, True Move H Universal Communication of True Corp, and Jas Mobile Broadband of Jasmine International.
Earlier the telecom committee set December 15 as the date to auction the 900MHz licences before finalising November 12 as the auction date, and going back to December 15 again.
The telecom committee advised the Information and Communication Technology Ministry of the new auction date to submit to the Cabinet for acknowledgment today. This is the third time it has asked for Cabinet acknowledgement of the 900MHz auction date.
NBTC secretary-general Takorn Tantsith said the 900MHz auction date would not be postponed again.
He said the reason it was changed this time was that academics and an anti-corruption organisation had cautioned that holding the auctions one day apart, on November 11 and 12, might result in a lack of genuine competition among the bidders, which would also result in low final bids. They advised that the auction of the 900MHz licences should be postponed from November 12.
Takorn said the NBTC took the view that the postponement of the auction would also provide more time for existing 900MHz mobile-phone users, whose service was provided under a concession to AIS that expired in September, to migrate to different networks. More than 2.2 million users of AIS’s 900MHz service still have not moved to another network.
A telecom-industry source said a group of academics and the National Anti-Corruption Organisation of Thailand met with Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha on Friday to voice concerns about possible bidder collusion, as there are only four licences available for auction and only four bidders for both spectra.
Prayut then reportedly asked the NBTC to reschedule the 900MHz auction from November 12 to January 27, but the commission told him it should be put off for only one month.
