Advanced Info Service (AIS) and True Move have joined together to ask the government to invoke Section 44 to ease their financial burden, extending the due date of their last 4G licence payment, originally scheduled for 2019, for another five years.
The move came after the two mobile operators, the only winners of the 4G licence auction in 2015, said the 60-billion-baht payment is too high, asking the government for changes in the concession payment scheme.
The move mirrors the request of digital TV operators, who urged the government to invoke Section 44 to eliminate rental fees for broadcasting networks and waive remaining licence fee payments.
However, industry veterans agree the industries are in very different stages of their life cycle.
Digital TV is considered a sunset industry facing an important challenge from over-the-top (OTT) platforms, while mobile operators are a sunrise industry that will benefit from the digital revolution including the rise of OTT content.
If their request is granted, the carriers agree to pay 12 billion baht per year plus interest to the government from 2019 until 2023, instead of a 60-billion-baht one-time payment in 2019.
Anuparp Thiralarp, an independent telecom academic, rose in opposition to the request, saying the 4G auction was faulty from the beginning because the telecom regulator focused mainly on price rather than on maximising public welfare.
Takorn Tantasith, secretary-general of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC), said last week it received a letter from the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) seeking to gauge the regulator's opinion on the request.
Mr Takorn said he agreed with the request, but the move needs to be approved by the NBTC's board. The petition will be considered at the NBTC's next board meeting scheduled for Dec 27.
"I think we should ease their burden," he said. "We accept that the winning prices of the 900-megahertz licences were too high, in part because of the experience of JAS Mobile Broadband, which submitted a high bid but defaulted on its first payment."
NBTC will submit a resolution to NCPO after its Dec 27 meeting. The final decision is up to NCPO, said Mr Takorn.
The 900MHz licence auction took 199 bidding rounds, over more than 87 hours, fetching a combined 151.95 billion baht.
JAS Mobile Broadband won the first licence for 75.65 billion baht, or 486.4% higher than the 12.9-billion reserve price. True Move H Universal Communication (TUC), a subsidiary of True Move, won the second licence for 76.29 billion baht, or 491.3% higher than the reserve price.
However, JAS defaulted on its first payment in March 2016, after which its bid was confiscated, and was ordered to pay a 200 million baht fine to NBTC.
Advanced Wireless Network (AWN), a subsidiary of AIS, took over JAS's licence for the amount of its winning bid.
AWN and TUC are required to pay 40.2 billion baht to NBTC in 2018. AWN is expected to pay 59.5 billion for its last instalment in 2019, and TUC 60.2 billion.
The approval of AWN and TUC's payment proposal would create a benchmark for judging the fairness of the next license auctions in 2018, Mr Takorn said.
Anuparp Thiralarp, an independent telecom academic, firmly opposes the payment proposal as it will not generate any public benefit because the high investment cost of the licences would be passed onto consumers in the form of higher tariffs.
"The spectrum is a national resource and the NBTC made a mistake in focusing on price," he said.
A source at the NBTC, who asked not to be named, said representatives of TUC and AWN informed NCPO they would not participate in the 2018 licence auction, given the high financial burden paying for their 4G licences will represent in 2019.
"Under the existing conditions for the 900MHz bidding process, companies have to set aside a large budget or acquire a loan to pay the reserve, which will inevitably affect their ability to participate in the next auction and to contribute to a 5G investment roadmap that would benefit Thailand's digital economy," said the source.