The telecom regulator has deferred the spectrum auction date to May 20 following the major cellphone operators’ non-participatory approach to the April 30 bidding.
Yesterday was the deadline for filing application to participate in the April 30 auction that has been rescheduled for May 20.
Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) also rescheduled all other related activities of spectrum auctions and also extended the application filing date to April 16 from March 29.
Through this auction the telecom watchdog also plans to allocate 10.6MHz spectrum on 1,800 band and 15MHz on 2,100 band.
The government will be ableto earn at least $650 million if all spectrum blocks are sold.
BTRC has already made public its rescheduled notification through its website.
The notification says the commission has decided to change the timetable of the said auction to perform the overall proceedings of 1,800MHz and 2,100MHz band spectrum auctions efficiently under the revealing circumstances.
The mobile operators welcomed the rescheduling of auction date, but said 20 days are a very short period of time to resolve the pending issues.
It seems that the postponement period for the auction submission date is too short to resolve the long pending industry issues at hand, said Mahmud Hossain, chief corporate affairs officer, GP.
“We should request the relevant authorities including the regulator to utilise this time through expediting the resolution process.”
The Grameenphone official was, however, hopeful that the government will take the issue seriously to find the mobile operators being a vibrant partner for building digitised Bangladesh.
On the long standing unresolved SIM replacement tax issue that attached around Tk2,464.88 crore, the tax regulator claimed that from four mobile operators.
According to the notification, after filing the application for spectrum auction, BTRC will publish the list of qualified applicants on April 21.