All five bidders declared qualified for NBTC auction
The board of National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) today (February 12) declared as qualified bidders all five telecom operators which had submitted the bid documents for four spectrum bands on February 16.
The five were True Move H Universal Communication Company Limited (TUC) of True Corp, dtac TriNet of Total Access Communication, Advanced Wireless Network (AWN) of Advanced Info Service (AIS), TOT and CAT Telecom.
TUC, AWN, dtac TriNet and TOT targeted the 26GHz band, said NBTC secretary-general Takorn Tantasith.
AWN and TUC were also keen on 700MHz and 2,600MHz, he said, adding that CAT was also interested in the two bands.
None of them targeted the 1800MHz band, he said.
The NBTC will auction three licences of the 700MHz, seven licences of 1800MHz, 19 licences of the 2,600MHz, and 27 licences of the 26GHz. The NBTC expected the winners to use the bands to provide 5G wireless broadband service.
The competition for the 2,600MHz licences are expected to intensify, given the need for at least 100MHz bandwidth (ten licences) out of the available 190MHz bandwidth (19 licences) in the auction in order to enable the company to provide effective 5G service.
The 2,600MHz licence, each containing 10MHz bandwidth, is priced at Bt1.862 billion. Each bidder can have a maximum of 10 licences for this band.
