As expected, the Ombudsman has petitioned the Central Administrative Court to rule on whether last month's auction of bandwidth on the 2.1-gigahertz spectrum lacked free and fair competition and to issue an injunction temporarily suspending the issuance of licences to the bid winners.
It also asked the court to consider establishing an urgent inquiry into the case.
Yesterday's petition focused on whether there was appropriate competition in the October 16 auction according to the Constitution and the Frequency Allocation Law regarding spectrum allocation.
The chairman of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission's telecom committee, Settapong Malisuwan, said the petition by the Ombudsman to the court was not beyond his expectation. He said the NBTC was ready to comply with the court's ruling whatever it might be.
The petition follows a recent request to the Ombudsman by a group of senators to scrutinise whether the spectrum auction breached the State Bidding Act and whether the NBTC's telecom committee had full authority to endorse the bid outcome.
Settapong said the 2010 Frequency Allocation Law clearly stated the scope of the telecom committee's authority.
The committee has set up its own panel to probe whether there was collusion among the three bidders. The probe subcommittee extended the deadline for completion of its investigation to early next month from the original deadline of November 10.
The industry, which is eager to get going on long-awaited third-generation cellular services on the 2.1GHz spectrum, is waiting to see whether the NBTC can grant the licences as planned amid several legal challenges after the auction.
Recently the NBTC said that if there were no court order to stop the licensing and if the commission's own probe committee found no bid collusion, the telecom committee would press ahead to issue the licences to the three bid winners.
Under the terms of the auction, the licences should be granted to the winners within 90 days of the telecom committee's endorsing their bids. The committee made those endorsements on October 18.
Darmp Sukontasap, Total Access Communication (DTAC) chief corporate affairs officer, said he was still optimistic that the NBTC could grant the 2.1GHz spectrum licences.
Advance Wireless Network of Advanced Info Service, Real Future of True Corp, and DTAC Network of Total Access Communication were the bid winners, acquiring three bandwidth slots each.
The three paid a combined Bt41.625 billion for the nine prized spectrum slots and have paid to |the NBTC half of the total final up-front fee.
AIS' share price yesterday closed at Bt187, down 0.53 per cent, while that of DTAC closed at Bt83, up 0.61 per cent. True closed at Bt4.78, down 1.24 per cent.
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Article source: http://www.thethailandlinks.com/2012/11/09/ombudsman-seeks-ruling-on-3g-auction/
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