Prior to the auction announcement, BC quietly granted a bottleneck "network" license to existing government incumbent which means that all the new DTTV providers have to send DTTV signal to these governmental MUX providers at the price fixed by the providers themselves. In response to claim of uncertainty and in order to lessen financial risk to potential bidders might face after the granting of license, BC came out to state that it encouraged the "potential" bidders to "negotiate" MUX price/charge before going into the bidding room.