The National Telecommunications Commission will call the auction of licences for the 3G2.1gigahertz spectrum in the last week of September, according to the time frame approved yesterday by the NTC board.
NTC chairman Prasit Prapinmongkolkarn confirmed the time frame.
The NTC will auction three 15year licences for thirdgeneration (3G) mobile telecommunication service at the starting bid price of Bt12.8 billion each. Some NTC members are on an overseas roadshow to woo foreign telecom operators to join the bidding. They have already met with China Mobile, China Unicom, and SK Telecom.
The NTC has moved ahead with the licensing plan despite opposition to of some aspects of it.
Some private telecom operators have opposed the auction method, while others want the NTC to remove Clause 9.4 of the plan, regarding the return of 2G (secondgeneration) spectra by licence winners.
The clause requires incumbent telecom operators who acquire one of the new licences to return existing spectra to the concession owners TOT or CAT Telecom for reallocation. The reasoning behind the clause is that operators should not own too many spectra.
Some telecom operators, however, have expressed uncertainty that the two state enterprises will reassign spectra to them so they can continue providing 2G service.
The NTC has affirmed that TOT and CAT are obligated to provide current concession holders spectra to continue 2G service.
Meanwhile, the state joint committee developing the concession termination plan will meet with the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) this Friday to discuss on the mobile phone service concession termination plan. It will also meet with all private mobile phone concession holders next week on the same matter.
Information and Communications Technology Ministry and Finance Ministry set up the joint committee to study the possibility of the concession termination in three main aspects, legal, technical, and finance.
A source of the committee said that in term of the legal aspect there are possible legal ways to terminate the concessions but declined to elaborate on more details.
The move is in line with the effort of the finance ministry to terminate the mobile phone concessions for the concession holders to obtain NTC licences in a move to put all mobile phone operators to operate under the single NTC regulations. Currently they have operated under the overlapped state concession and NTC regulations.