Thailand may go TD-LTE by default

23 Apr 2015
00:00

But back to the auction. What started as a simple re-allocation of expiring 900- and 1800-MHz concessions has now evolved into a not just a witches’ brew of 900-, 1800-, 2300- and 2600- but also with serious questions on how best to defragment the legacy 1800-MHz spectrum and whether to go with Chinese style TDD or rest-of-word FDD on 2600-MHz.

Things are relatively clear-cut on 900-MHz. 17.5 MHZ of ex-AIS spectrum is up for grabs and a further 2.5 of what was AMPS 800 guard band will be added to make it 20 MHz. No more 900 is available as Thailand also does American style 850-MHz 3G. Well, relatively straightforward as it may be involved in a swap for 2300.

Fragmentation is the key problem on 1800-MHz. Currently the plan is to auction 12.5 MHz of ex True and 12.5 MHz of ex AIS (DPC) spectrum. With most licences around the world being in multiples of 10-MHz that 2.5 MHz could be a huge waste or perhaps, maybe, sort of useful for a narrow-band 1.6 MHz LTE carrier for slow M2M communications depending on who you ask.

From low to high, 1800 currently has 12.5 MHz of True, 25 MHz of Dtac, 12.5 MHz of AIS (DPC) and another 25 MHz of Dtac. Dtac has offered to return its unused upper 25 MHz and shuffle itself down in if it can run LTE on the spectrum it has. The NBTC (Takorn) has said that a committee would be set up to look at Dtac’s proposal but that any extra 1800 would be auctioned sometime next year, apparently ruling out defragmentation (for now).

Obviously nobody seems to think of the big picture and how those 2.5-MHz end bits will be used or wasted or how the spectrum will be defragmented at a later date. Obviously that is somebody else’s problem. Literally and figuratively with a new incoming NBTC.

TOT currently has 64-MHz of 2300 and has offered to return it for auction in exchange for 900 on which to run the network it inherits from AIS this September. Either that or it might use 20 MHz for 4G in exchange for, well, something.

But when it comes to 2600, the real fun starts. For weeks people have been arguing about 2600 without actually defining what 2600 actually is. Are they arguing about FDD band 7 (which is pretty standard and well supported) or band 41 (Chinese style TDD?). Everyone says 2600 while nobody seems to want to spell out what they are arguing about. Half the industry says 2600 is not a standard frequency, the other half says it is.

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