NBTC secretary-general Takorn Tantasith said yesterday that the office would also propose – for consideration at the board meeting on April 11 – that Jas Mobile Broadband (JASMBB) be excluded from participation in the 1800MHz licence auction.

However, the board is viewed as unlikely to consider these proposals as it would want to leave these decisions to an incoming board. The National Legislative Assembly will appoint seven new NBTC commissioners on April 19.

Takorn said that despite the upcoming selection of the new commissioners, the office was duty-bound to press ahead to submit such proposals involving the original auction rules to the board, or risked facing a charge of negligence of duty.

The originally proposed auction rules provided for the sale of three licences of 1800MHz, each with 15MHz bandwidth. The amended version would see nine licences sold, each with 5MHz bandwidth.

Takorn said the proposed switch to the original version was in response to the opinions of prospective bidders that had already completed their business plans on these auction assumptions. Moreover, the NBTC should not keep revising the rules.

JASMBB was one of the auction winners for a 900MHz licence in 2015. However, it failed to pay the first instalment of the licence upfront fee by the deadline.

This prompted the NBTC to later re-auction the licence that JASMBB had won, resulting in Advanced Wireless Network (AWN) clinching the licence.

Earlier, the NBTC had viewed that JASMBB was still eligible to enter the bidding for a 1800MHz licence, given that it completed payment of the fine for its failure to pay the first instalment of the upfront fee for the 900MHz licence.

However, yesterday Takorn said that although JASMBB had fully paid the fine, it was viewed that the penalty did not did not match the damage caused by the consequences of what was seen as its over-aggressive bidding and its failure to make the upfront payment.

Were JASMBB allowed to enter the bidding for a 1800MHz licence, the other prospective bidders might feel uncertain as to the ultimate outcome, Takorn said.

JASMBB bid Bt75.6 billion for the 900MHz licence, almost five times the minimum starting bid.

Separately, TrueMove H Universal Communications (TUC), the other winner of a 900MHz licence auction in 2015, yesterday paid to the NBTC the second instalment of the licence upfront fee of around Bt4.301 billion. AWN, as the second holder of a 900MHz licence, is due to pay the second instalment in July this year.

AWN and TUC proposed to the junta last June that the Article 44 special power held by the junta chief under the interim constitution be invoked to allow the operators to divide the final instalments of the 900MHz spectrum licence upfront fee into multiple tranches.

AWN and TUC are scheduled to |pay the hefty final instalments of Bt59.574 billion and Bt60.218 billion, respectively, in 2020.

The junta had consulted the watchdog on the two operators’ requests.

The NBTC recommended that they should be allowed to split the final instalments payment into five tranches and that they pay interest of 1.5 per cent, based on the Bank of Thailand’s policy rate.

In the case of AWN, if the request were granted, it would be able to pay Bt11.914 billion as the first of a proposed five tranches of the final instalment. It would pay interest of 1.5 per cent on the remaining principal of Bt47.659 billion.

The NBTC submitted this proposal, together with other solutions to ease the financial burden of the digital TV licence holders, to the junta for consideration – for the first time – last week.

However, the junta deferred a final decision on the matter and asked the NBTC to present more details to justify the case for helping the operators. It said it was wary of possible criticism for favouring some private operators if it stepped in with assistance.

Takorn said that he would submit more details on the case for such assistance to Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krua-ngam by late yesterday or today.