Pakistan Telecommunication Authority have announced that they’ve received only bid for the auction of Spectrum for NGMS (3G/4G) till the deadline of May 17.
Only Jazz have decided to go for the 10 MHz paired slot in 1800 MHz, while Ufone, Telenor, Zong and any new mobile operator have shown no interest in the bidding process.
PTA will now evaluate the bid as per IM and if it is found to have met all required conditions the bid will be declared successful.
Third NGMS auction & Government already made 2 Billion USD:
The successful bidder will have two options for payment i.e all payment (USD 295 Million) made upfront, or 50 percent payment can be made upfront and remaining 50 percent in 5 equal annual installments with one year LIBOR plus 3%.
In addition, successful bidder will also pay 10% tax on the auction winning price to FBR which comes to 29.5 USD Million.
It may be noted that this is the third NGMS auction held so far since 2014 and a total of USD 1.98 Billion have been earned for the national exchequer through these spectrum auctions.
At the moment, Jazz uses three frequency bands 900, 1800 and 2100 MHz. For Internet data, it uses 10 Mhz slot of the 2100 Mhz for 3G and for 4G it has refarmed 1800 MHz of Warid. However, Warid’s spectrum is going to expire in 2019, so Jazz needed to get the 4G spectrum for future.
It is quite unfortunate that Ufone is the only operator in Pakistan not offering 4G services at the moment. Customers are not happy with their current 3G network as well and were hoping that Ufone would go for the 4G license, but it seems that the company has no interest in investing more money in Pakistan.
