Brief spectrum retention eyed

Suthiphon Taveechaiyagarn, a member of the NBTC, said yesterday that it had considered citing Article 84 (3) of the Frequency Allocation Law to allow TOT and CAT Telecom to continue providing services to customers of private providers after their cellular concessions expire.

But the two will eventually have to return their spectra to the NBTC so that they can be reallocated back to them.

The law says the NBTC has to reassign frequencies according to the public benefit and the needs of the spectrum owners in doing business and utilising the spectra.

The concessions of TrueMove and Digital Phone Co (DPC) under CAT will expire in September next year, while that of Advanced Info Service under TOT will run out in 2015 and that of Total Access Communication (DTAC) under CAT in 2018.

According to the commission’s spectrum management master plan, all the state enterprises have to hand over their frequencies for NBTC reallocation after the ends of the concessions using those frequencies.

The NBTC would consider an appropriate period for the state telecom enterprises to hold the frequencies, which might be five years.

Suthiphon also met with all state enterprises and private telecom operators to brief them on regulations requiring them to inform the NBTC of their use of spectra and their spectrum ownership by September 14. The regulations went into effect on June 16.

The NBTC has set up a committee to lay out a plan to deal with the ends of concessions of both TrueMove and DPC, which have a combined 18 million mobile-phone subscribers. The panel has to complete the plan this year.

A CAT representative at the meeting said the NBTC had jumped ahead of itself in the process. It should complete the plan to deal with the end of the concessions first before issuing the spectrum master plan to reclaim the spectra under the concessions.

Suthiphon argued that the NBTC had to complete the master plan first to provide legal support for its move to auction the 2.1-gigahertz spectrum.