The board of the national telecom regulator will discuss how to further proceed with the licensing plan of the 3G 2.1GHz spectrum bands at its meeting this week, commissioner Natee Sukonrat said on Friday.
He added that the National Telecommunications Commission would definitely move ahead with the licensing plan, even though there is progress in the formation of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) to replace the NTC.
The House of Representatives passed the bill governing the NBTC's formulation last week. The bill will next be forwarded to the Senate.
Natee believes the granting of 3G 2.1GHz licences will bring benefits to consumers.
The NTC will also discuss with the public to determine the actual 3G wireless broadband service demand, he added.
An NTC source said the |watchdog was expected to make major changes in some details |of the licensing plan, including the number of the licences and their spectrum bandwidth amount.
Earlier NTC chairman-designate Prasit Prapinmongkolkarn said the NTC was expected to allocate the 3G licences by the end of the year.
The NTC's existing 3G-licensing plan stipulates auctioning four licences - one featuring a 15-megahertz bandwidth and each of the others 10MHz - but it has yet to finalise the plan.
Many private parties oppose a licence auction, saying such a method would give the upper hand to cash-rich bidders.
Another criticism is that granting licences would pave |the way for incumbent |private telecom operators, which could win the licences and migrate their customers away from state concessions, to save on huge regulatory costs at the expense of the owners of the concessions.
State concessions cost mobile operators an average of 25 per cent of their annual gross revenue, while the licence fees will cost each of them about 6 per cent of their revenue.
