True Corporation is calling on the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) to lower the reserve price for auctioning the third-generation (3G) spectrum in order to support Thai mobile companies.
As the sole wholly Thai-owned mobile operator, a cheaper reserve price and relaxed payment terms will encourage it to fight with foreign-based mobile operators, said Noppadol Dej-udom, True's chief finance officer.
He was apparently referring to mobile leader Advanced Info Service, which is controlled by Singapore's Temasek and Singapore Telecom, and second-ranked operator Total Access Communication (DTAC), which is controlled by Telenor of Norway.
The NBTC has set a reserve price for the 3G licencing auction on the 2100-megahertz spectrum at 4.5 billion baht for each 5-MHz slot. The auction is preliminarily expected to be sometime in October.
The winning bidders must pay half of the licence costs to the NBTC within 45 days after the auction.
Mr Noppadol said the NBTC should learn the past lesson from the previous information memorandum (IM) for 3G auctions from the the now-defunct National Telecommunications Commission.
He spoke yesterday at a public consultation about 3G auction terms, with almost 200 participants attending the event.
Under the IM, bidders have to place cash of 1.35 billion baht as a minimum guarantee before they can join the auction.
The auction will offer nine slots on the spectrum, each containing 5 MHz of bandwidth. The event will feature simultaneous ascending-bid auctions. Each participant can gather a maximum bandwidth of 20 MHz.
Somprasong Boonyachai, executive chairman of Advanced Info Service, said the company recently sent the NBTC a proposal to reduce the spectrum cap for auction from a bandwidth to 15MHz of 20MHz.