The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission has decided to increase the power of the auctioneer in the draft auction method for the 3G auction which is scheduled on September 8.
BTRC officials said the draft auction process would allow the auctioneer to raise the call price by his own in specific case and call for strategic timeout if necessary.‘We are working on the draft and hope to finish it very soon. We are also analysing the issues raised by the operators about the auction process,’ BTRC chairman Sunil Kanti Bose told New Age on Monday.
The auction method will be a combination of British Outcry, which is a traditional auction method, and Clock Auction method, which is a descending price auction method. The major issues of auction are designed according to Outcry method, the BTRC officials said.
They said if there was more than one bidder matching the price of a call in any phase, the preference will be given to quickest respondent as per the Clock Auction method.
‘The important change will be allowing the auctioneer to take strategic timeout which was earlier only operators’ call. The timeout will be limited within 20 minutes for both which was earlier unlimited for participants,’ a senior BTRC official told New Age.
The BTRC is also likely to redesign the third phase of the auction process which was to sell the unsold spectrum at a lower price as per the draft auction process, he said.
The five private mobile phone operators, which got regulator’s clearance to participate in the 3G auction, are pressuring the BTRC to change the auction process to turn things into their favour.
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 10MHz, second phase for 5MHZ and last phase for unsold block, if any.
The participants which bid for 10MHz spectrum will be allowed for bidding for the unsold spectrum, it also said.
The participant which bids for 5MHz will not be eligible for bidding the unsold block, the draft said.
The draft auction procedure also proposed to raise
the price of each call at the auction to $1 million per megahertz from $5,00,000.
It also proposed to sell the unsold block in a lower rate.
The Commission officials said the operators opposed the procedure and demanded withdrawal of the slab-based auction process.
The operators claimed that 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 lower from $20 million.
The five mobile phone companies, Grameenphone, Banglalink, Robi, Airtel and Citycell, are pressuring and lobbying with the BTRC high-ups from the beginning of the 3G auction guideline to reduce the competition factor from the auction, said the BTRC officials.
The government has made some changes in the draft 3G guideline to facilitate the existing operators, they said.
They said Japanese mobile giant NTT Docomo was last in the race as new entrant but the local operators made the BTRC change the guideline which forced the new company to take 2G licence at high price.
Finally, no foreign company submitted the application for 3G auction although initially one licence was reserved for a foreign operator.
The BTRC will award four licences to five mobile companies operating in the country as the state-owned mobile operator Teletalk got 3G licence by default.
A total of 40MHz of spectrum will be auctioned for eight blocks where a single bidder can bid for maximum two blocks with a base price of $20 million for each MHz.
-With New Age input
