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.”
Questions abound though why the subject of this spectrum fragmentation has only arisen after the auction was announced.
Dtac interim CEO Sigve Brekke has radically proposed that Dtac return almost all its concessionary spectrum holdings for early re-auction in order to de-fragment the band so that industry-standard 10 MHz blocks can be licenced.
The Bangkok Post reported that Brekke had offered the early return of its 10 MHz of 850 as well as the unused upper block of 25 MHz and re-shuffle its existing 25 MHz down into the ex-True block so that spectrum can be re-allocated without the immense waste of the 2.5 MHz block.
Dtac has said it would do so without asking for compensation for the concession that would have otherwise run out in 2018. In return all it asked was for 15 MHz of that 25 to be re-farmed for LTE and 10 MHz used for 2G.
What was missing from Brekke’s narrative was Dtac’s concession holder CAT Telecom and how it stood to lose huge amounts of money from the current 30% revenue-share agreement on concessionary assets (Dtac 2G 1800 and Dtac 3G 850).
It would appear that Brekke has made the offer to put the ball in CAT Telecom’s court and to highlight the huge costs of the concession and the difficulty of dealing with the concession holder. CAT had recalled the top 25-MHz band that had been in use and has repeatedly claimed ownership over it. Around the same time it also re-allocated 2.5 MHz of Dtac AMPS concessionary 1G spectrum to rival TrueMove so True could run 15-MHz of 850-MHz 3G even though there was a constitutional moratorium on spectrum-reallocation, much to Dtac’s protest.
CAT also has announced it would be asking for the new Digital Economy Commission to allocate that spectrum once the Digital Economy laws are passed and initial spectrum allocation power is removed from the NBTC and given to the DE board.
Inexplicably however, Brekke was reported to have said that 700, 2300 and 2600 bands were not internationally recognised bands and that very few handsets supported them.
Allan Rasmussen from consultant Yozzo took to social media to highlight the concerted effort to dismiss 2600 and said that Telenor’s own operations in Malaysia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Hungary all use 2600.
All modern handsets support band 7 (2600) and all phones variants for the Chinese market support TDD 2300 (and TDD 2600).
Dtac PR was contacted but did not respond to requests to comment about spectrum allocation and defragment proposals by the time of going to print.
Earlier the NBTC had also said that 2600 was not an internationally recognised frequency supported only by a few phones and USB dongles after Deputy Prime Minister Pridiyathorn Devakul had promised to negotiate the early return of 2600 from its use in broadcasting for allocation for 4G.
Elsewhere Business daily Prachachart has quoted an unnamed source in the Digital Economy Commission saying that TOT has agreed to the early release of 62 MHz of 2300 in return for its continued use of 900 once AIS’ concession ends in September, again casting doubt on whether or not the 20 MHz of 900 will be up for auction.