THE NATIONAL Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) will start inviting interested companies on August 28 to bid for two telecom licences on the 1800-megahertz spectrum.
They can submit bid documents on September 30.
The NBTC board approved the rules for the 1800MHz licence auction yesterday. It will call the bids on November 11 and issue the licences on November 20 and 21.
"We expect that the bid winners will be able to start offering 4G service in February next year," NBTC secretary-general Takorn Tantasith said yesterday.
As things currently stand, the NBTC will auction a total of 30MHz bandwidth on the 1800MHz spectrum, two licences for 15MHz each. The minimum starting bid is Bt15.912 billion,equivalent to 80 per cent of the full assessed value.
The commission originally planned to auction a total of 25MHz for the two licences,12.5MHz each. But CAT Telecom and Total Access Communication (DTAC) jointly agreed to hand over 5MHz of the latter's part of 1,800MHz to the NBTC for auction by September 25. This will enable the NBTC to auction a total of 30MHz.
If CAT and DTAC fail to hand over the bandwidth on schedule,the NBTC will go back to the original plan of auctioning two licences with 12.5MHz each at a minimum starting bid of Bt13.26 billion.
If there are only two qualified bidders, the NBTC will raise the minimum to Bt19.89 billion or 100 per cent of the full value in the case of auctioning a licence for 15MHz,and to Bt16.575 billion in the case of auctioning a licence for 12.5MHz.
At least four companies have announced that they will join the bidding: Advanced Info Service,DTAC, True Corp and Jasmine International.