The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) opened its January spectrum auction, expecting the high-stakes competition typical of vital national infrastructure sales. Instead, the room fell silent.
Grameenphone acquired 10 MHz of the 700 MHz band at the base reserve price of Tk 2,370 crore, Robi withdrew, while Banglalink stayed away from the bidding, leaving 10 MHz of the unsold spectrum to be assigned later to state-owned Teletalk at the same rate.
Failing to attract competition, this transaction left policy-makers with a critical question: How can such an auction dictate the pricing of an upcoming renewal cycle?
The short answer is it cannot. True market value requires viable alternatives where operators bid for expansion, not survival. Spectrum renewal offers no such luxury.
Once a mobile operator anchors its network architecture around a specific band and deploys thousands of base stations, walking away is no longer an option. A renewal price has little to do with market value; it is apparently a reflection of short-term state treasury demands colliding with an operator's inability to walk away without shutting down their business.
This structural disconnect matters as Bangladesh approaches the November renewal of spectrum in the 900 MHz, 1.8 GHz, and 2.1 GHz bands. Data from the GSMA’s 2025 study reveals that Bangladesh’s spectrum costs consume 15.7% of operators’ recurring revenues, much higher than the Asia-Pacific median of 10.4% and the global median of 7.7%.
Macroeconomic modeling suggests that cutting this economic burden to half could unlock $34 billion in cumulative economic benefits by 2035 and a 75% reduction could generate $45bn. These numbers are no prescription to slash prices; rather, they must be weighed against the state’s undeniable fiscal duty to manage a public asset.
At the same time, operators need capital for advanced radios and network upgrades. The real policy challenge is not finding an arbitrary, magic price per megahertz, but ensuring that every megahertz becomes highly productive.
The spectrum efficiency mismatch
Spectrum productivity is best measured by its capacity for dense urban hubs, wider coverage for rural villages, and reliable network quality during peak hours. Yet, BTRC data exposes a deep structural imbalance in our airwaves.
State-owned Teletalk holds 65.2 MHz for just 6.8 million subscribers, while Grameenphone must squeeze 84.4 million subscribers into 137.4 MHz. Serving remote terrain explains part of this gap, but not all of it.
When rigid frameworks lock spectrum in underutilized silos while urban networks suffer from congestion, the scarcity becomes artificial. Because traffic patterns shift constantly, a band that was adequate five years ago may leave one city congested today while sitting idle in another. If frequency blocks cannot move dynamically to match this shifting public demand, the consumer experience inevitably degrades, and the broader digital economy suffers.
Global precedents and cautious tales
Other nations have long recognized that draining an operator's capital through high upfront spectrum fees may starve the investments needed for network rollouts. Many have shifted toward models that trade immediate financial burdens for guaranteed socio-economic outcomes.
India addressed artificial scarcity by legalizing spectrum trading and sharing, allowing rights to move toward operators facing heavy traffic. Its framework permitted transfers subject to spectrum caps, roll-out obligations, eligibility conditions and a two-year holding period, with a 1% transfer fee.
Similarly, Austria and Colombia tied their low-band spectrum licensing directly to rural coverage, allowing operators to earn explicit fee discounts or convert coverage commitments into cash-equivalent credits. Spain and Canada chose to extend license terms or waive upfront renewal fees where operators could demonstrate minimum population coverage, giving companies the necessary breathing room to amortize massive hardware investments.
The warnings from the global markets should also be watched closely. In its multi-band auction, Pakistan cut reserve prices on legacy bands by more than 50%, yet those bands still drew no bids.
This proved that artificial benchmarks fail to create demand for spectrum that lacks commercial viability. In contrast, Vietnam demonstrates the power of flexible strategic asset pricing; after a failed 2023 auction, it slashed reserve prices by nearly 80%, separating long-term economic utility from the temptation of short-term cash extraction to rapidly achieve roughly 90% 5G coverage by early 2026.
Meanwhile, other regulatory experiments show distinct operational challenges: Austria faced ambiguity over how coverage would be measured. Colombia’s process was criticized for hiding minimum bids in advance while miscalculating rural rollout costs.
Finally, Canada’s model serves as a direct warning; its rigid obligation conditions drove up holding costs without incentivizing efficient use, creating long-term operational inefficiencies after the regulator ignored industry challenges during consultations.
Navigating toward balanced regulation
To break out of the cycle of revenue-maximizing deadlocks and deteriorating network quality, Bangladesh needs a pragmatic, forward-looking approach. Rather than exhausting operator liquidity through high upfront hurdles, BTRC can incentivize infrastructure development by recalibrating its renewal fees into a more manageable, back-loaded payment timeline.
Dr Sabbir Ahmad is a tech executive with global experience in digital connectivity, sustainable infrastructure and energy. He is shaping Bangladesh's semiconductor landscape as the CEO of Silicon Array Ltd. Email: sabbir@ieee.org.