Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission on Monday cleared all five mobile phone companies to participate in the 3G spectrum auction scheduled for September 8.
The BTRC on the day also asked the operators —Grameenphone, Banglalink, Robi, Airtel and Citycell — to comply with the 3G auction guideline and auction schedule set by the commission.
No foreign company, however, submitted application to take part in the auction for the licence reserved for foreign operators because of alleged syndication among the operators to do away with the competition factor.
The BTRC was set to award three licences to the existing mobile phone companies and one to a new entrant, but now the five existing companies will bid for four licences.
Another local operator, the state-run Teletalk, has already got 3G licence by default.
According to the BTRC auction timeline, the regulator will sit with the applicants today for discussing the auction procedure.
Earlier, the commission had met the operator twice to discuss the auction process where the latter raised several objections about the draft auction process.
The BTRC is likely to modify the 3G auction process, bowing down before the demand of the mobile phone operators, said commission officials.
They said the operators were lobbying with the commission high-ups to turn things into their favour, including elimination of phased auction system and price of unsold block.
The commission is likely to agree with the operators’ terms and conditions as the government is desperate to
hold the auction ahead of the next national elections, he said.
The BTRC informed the mobile phone companies about the auction procedure in a meeting on July 30 where the operators opposed the procedure claiming that it would increase competition.
According to BTRC draft auction process, the auction will be conducted in three phases — first phase will be for 10 MHz, second phase for 5 MHZ and the last phase for unsold block, if any.
The participants who will bid for 10 MHz spectrum will be allowed to bid for the unsold spectrum. The participant who will bid for 5 MHz will not be eligible to bid for the unsold block.
The draft auction procedure also recommended raising the price of each call at the auction to $1 million per megahertz from $5,00,000.
It also suggested sale of the unsold block at a lower rate.
The commission officials said the operators opposed the procedure and demanded withdrawal of the slab-based auction process.
The operators claimed such slab-based auction would facilitate the big companies and the small operators might not find enough spectrums for themselves.
They also demanded that the amount of the earnest money should be lowered from $20 million.
The eligible operators will also have to deposit the bid earnest money of $20 billion by August 26 as per the BTRC auction schedule.
The operators, however, while submitting the application, tagged a condition of settling the revenue board’s claim worth Tk 3,100 crore for SIM replacement tax before August 26.
The National Board of Revenue in 2012 claimed a total of Tk 1,580 crore from GP, Tk 774 crore from Banglalink, Tk 664 crore from Robi and Tk 82 crore from Airtel saying that the operators had dodged the SIM replacement tax.
A total of 40 MHz of spectrum will be auctioned for eight blocks where a single bidder can bid for maximum two blocks.
The minimum allocation for a spectrum block is 5 MHz with base price of $20 million for each MHz.
-With New Age input
