Bangladesh's telecoms regulator, the BTRC has confirmed that it plans to award 3G licenses in the country by March 2009 - a delay on earlier promises to offer the licenses by the end of this year. During the launch of a trial 3G network by Ericsson in August, BTRC chairman Maj Gen (retd.) Manzurul Alam put a valuation of US$200 million on the licenses.

"The 3G licences will be issued by March next year ... the licences would be awarded through an open auction," Alam told the Reuters news agency.

A couple of months ago, the regulator sold a tranch of additional radio spectrum for US$204 million. Three incumbent operators brought the spectrum which the regulator said was necessary to cope with their increasing subscriber base.

Grameenphone, Banglalink and Aktel bought 7.5, 5 and 5 megahertz frequency respectively, at the rate of Tk 80 crore per MHz - giving them 21.9MHz, 17.5MHz and 17.8MHz respectively. Three other operators did not bid for the spectrum. Teletalk has 15.2MHz, Warid has 15MHz and Citycell has 10MHz.

A report by the GSMA last year had called on the regulator to issue the licenses by the 3rd quarter of this year. The spectrum should be licensed in a way that reflects its economic value and ensures it is efficiently used, the GSMA report argued.

The launch of 3G services could also assist in closing the "digital divide" which results in Bangladesh being poorly served by broadband internet services. A recent ITU report on telecoms in the Asia-Pacific region found that the minimum advertised broadband speed in countries such as Hong Kong and Japan is faster than the maximum broadband speed available in Bangladesh.

The country currently has six operators - and according to figures from the Mobile World, ended the first half of this year with just under 43.7 million mobile subscribers - which is still a population penetration level of 28.5%. Also worth noting is that while the country has six operators, only four of them are of any significant scale, Grameenphone (20.3m), Banglalink (9.5m) and Aktel (7.8m) and finally, Warid Telecom (3.3m). The two remaining long term incumbents, Citycell and Teletalk add up to 2.7 million customers between them.

Source:Reuters