The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission on Wednesday extended the application submission deadline for 3G auction participants to August 1 from earlier July 10.
The auction date will remain on September 2 as per the previous directive.
According to the new schedule, the date for publishing eligible firms has been shifted to August 5 from July 18 while consultation on auction procedure goes to August 12 from July 29.
Operators would now deposit the bid earnest money before August 19, which was earlier August 4. The BTRC can accept or reject any application on August 25.
The telecom regulator rescheduled the auction date three times before setting up the auction in September mainly due to pressure from the mobile phone operators to resolve 15 per cent VAT rebate issue of the 2G licence renewal.
BTRC chairman Sunil Kanti Bose had recently said that the VAT rebate issue was pending before the court and the government could not supersede the process.
The BTRC will award three licences to three out of five mobile companies operating in the country and one to any foreign firm. The state-run Teletalk has already got the 3G licence by default.
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.
The validity period for a 3G licence will be 15 years.
-With New Age input
