Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has approved to conduct the auction of unsold next generation mobile services (NGMS) spectrum with a base price of $295 million within the financial year 2016-17, it is learnt reliably.
Official sources in Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication told Pakistan Today that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has approved a policy directive for the auction of unsold next generation mobile services (NGMS) spectrum with a base price of $295 million and the auction will be conducted by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) within the financial year 2016-17.
And, the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication has issued policy directives to PTA regarding the unsold NGMS spectrum auction. They said PTA will conduct transparent competitive auction for assigning a single block of 10 MHz paired spectrum in the 1800 MHz band. Base price for the 10 MHz paired spectrum as a single block will be $295 million and payments terms and other conditions will be based on 2014 NGMS auction Information Memorandum (1M). “PTA has already made necessary arrangement to conduct auction of unsold 4G spectrum and hopefully whole process of auction will be done in May,” sources said.
The sources further said PTA will design the auction process to ensure fulfillment of the policy objective of optimal outcome mitigating chances of collusion among bidders. All existing cellular mobile operators (CMOs) as well as new players will be eligible to participate in the auction and the license for the provision of NGMS will be issued to the successful bidder. They said the tenure of frequency assignment will be 15 years, while the spectrum assignment will be technology neutral and usable for all Next Generation Mobile Services (including 3G/4G and advanced generations), and for efficient and optimal rollout of next generation mobile services, provisions of spectrum, infrastructure, Quality of Service (QoS) and national roaming as provided in the Telecommunication Policy 2015 will be applicable, sources said.
Earlier, the PM constituted an advisory committee to determine among other elements of policy regarding auction of frequency spectrum, the base price of the spectrum by analyzing the market developments. And, this advisory committee recommended auctioning of the 10 MHz paired spectrum in the 1800 MHz frequency band as a single block.
Sources also said that PTA, Frequency Allocation Board, and Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication has played role to conduct auction of 4G spectrum in the country to meet burgeoning demands. They said cellular operators are constantly adding millions of subscribers on a quarterly basis and as of January 2017, there are more than 38 million mobile broadband subscribers in the country.
It is worth mentioning that the spectrum auction for Next Generation Mobile Services in Pakistan was conducted in April 2014 under the policy directive issued by the federal government. And, consequent to this auction, issuance of respective licenses and launch of 3G/4G mobile broadband services besides the demand for data services grew exponentially along with the subscriber base that expanded from less than 3% to over 17% (28 million at the end of 1st quarter of 2016). This growth spawned demand for more frequency spectrum and subsequently, 10 MHz paired spectrum in 850 MHz was auctioned in June 2016 by PTA.
