The newly-installed President of Mexico’s telecoms regulator Cofetel, Mony de Swaan, twittered that now that the economic bidding phase for licenses in Mexico’s 1.7GHz band is over, he would decide whether to invalidate one or all 28 bids.
The review…
The newly-installed President of Mexico’s telecoms regulator Cofetel, Mony de Swaan, twittered that now that the economic bidding phase for licenses in Mexico’s 1.7GHz band is over, he would decide whether to invalidate one or all 28 bids.
The review process will take 30 days.
The hold-up in confirming the award of a 30MHz block to the Nextel/Televisa consortium revolves around the disappointingly low price Cofetel raised in the spectrum auction.
Initially 90MHz in total was being auctioned in 1.7GHz spectrum band. This was divided into two blocks of 30GHz and three blocks of 10MHz.
However, due to an anti-monopoly ceiling of 80MHz per operator, per region, the auction in one of the two 30MHz blocks was withdrawn for a lack of bids as no company could meet the requirements.
For the other 30MHz block, only Nextel/Televisa prequalified.
The last known offer by Nextel/Televisa was for Ps180m (US$14m) for 10MHz, an extremely low amount compared to the Ps5.30bn (US$395m) that the other participants offered for the three blocks of 10MHz in which there was open competition.
