Thai 4G auction watch - Auction pushed back

Don Sambandaraksa
30 Mar 2015
00:00

Days after dismissing the 900-MHz band as not ready for auction, ICT Minister Pornchai Rujiprapa announced that the cabinet has approved an auction with 900 back on the table.

The new auction date has been postponed to November or December (from the original August). The flavour of the week means that the auction will have 4 blocks up for auction - two 10-MHz 900-MHz blocks and two 12.5-MHz 1800-MHz blocks.

Pornchai expects $1.31 billion (42.9 billion Baht) from the auction of the four licences.

Meanwhile, further details have emerged about the ICT Minister’s proposal to negotiate the early recall of Dtac’s 1800-MHz 2G spectrum before the concession ends in September 2018.

Dtac has 50 MHz in two non-contiguous blocks of 25 MHz under its concession that ends in 2018 and this fragmentation is what the authorities want to avoid.

From low to high, there is 12.5 MHz of TrueMove, 25 MHz for Dtac, 12.5 MHz for DPC (AIS) and another 25 MHz of Dtac that is currently unused.

The authorities (in plural - it seems that the NBTC, the ICT Ministry and Deputy Prime Minsiter Pridiyathorn Devakul are all vying to be in charge of this auction) have said they will offer two 4G licences of 12.5 MHz each on the 1800-MHz band, re-farming the True and AIS blocks that have expired.

One AIS executive who asked not to be named explained to TelecomAsia that LTE can operate in 1.3, 3, 5, 10 and 20 MHz carriers. A 12.5 MHz licence could run two 5 MHz carriers and one 1.3 MHz carrier. Compatibility is not an issue and all modern devices should work with 1.3 MHz LTE carriers.

“This would be slow but could perhaps be useful for M2M,” the source said.

Asked if 1800-MHz should be defragmented first before being licensed he said, “It’s not too bad.”

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