The first-day of the digital television auction has brought in a total of almost 40 billion baht for the government in which 23.7 billion baht is for seven high-definition (HD) stations and 15.95 billion baht from seven standard-definition (SD) licences.
Bidders for high-definition digital television licences join on stage at CAT Tower in Bangkok. (Photo by Pawat Laopaisarntaksin)
In the morning bid session, BEC World Plc, the SET-listed broadcaster of Channel 3, made the top bid for a high-definition digital-TV licence at 3.53 billion baht. In the afternoon session, Thai Boardcasting Co (Work Point) offered the highest bid at 2.355 billion baht, or more than six times the minimum bid of 380 million baht. Each licence will last 15 years, according to the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC).
There were a total of 16 bidders joining the auction in the afternoon. The results are as follows.
1) Thai Broadcasting Co (Workpoint) bid at 2.355 billion baht.
2) True DTT Co bid at 2.315 billion baht.
3) GMM SD Digital TV Co bid at 2.29 billion baht.
4) BEC-Multimedia Co (Channel 3) bid at 2.275 billion baht.
5) R.S. Television Co bid at 2.265 billion baht.
6) Mono Broadcast Co bid at 2.25 billion baht.
7) Bangkok Business Broadcasting Co bid at 2.2 billion baht.
Nine firms competed for seven high-definition (HD) variety channels.
The top seven bids each won a channel. The bottom two missed out.
The bidding started at 11am, and quickly rose to over 3 billion baht in the first 10 minutes. The starting price for a high definition (HD) channel was 1.51 billion baht.
The result of this auction is as follows:
1) BEC World (Channel 3) bid at 3.53 billion baht, higher than the starting price by 2.02 billion baht.
2) Bangkok Media and Broadcasting bid at 3.46 billion baht.
3) BBTV (Channel 7) bid at 3.37 billion baht.
4) Triple V Broadcast (Thai Rath) bid at 3.36 billion baht.
5) Mcot bid at 3.34 billion baht.
6) Amarin Television bid at 3.32 billion baht.
7) GMM bid at 3.32 billion baht.
8) Workpoint bid at 3.31 billion baht.
9) PM Group bid at 3 billion baht.