Govt Plans to Earn Tk9,180Cr by Auctioning 180 MHz Spectrum

The government is eying to secure a minimum of Tk9,180 crore by auctioning 180 MHz spectrum for 5G and other technology on 31 March.

Empowered by the government, Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) set a floor price of $6 million per MHz spectrum.

However, price per spectrum could go up during the auction similar to the last auction when the price increased from $27 million to $46.75 million per MHz.

Mobile phone operators will have to submit an application by 14 March to take part in the auction, according to the Instruction Radio Frequency Auction 2022 issued by the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC).

Confirming the issue, Subrata Roy Maitra, vice chairman of the BTRC told the media that operators will have to launch 5G services within six months from the date of the auction.

This time, BTRC will auction the 60MHz spectrum in 6 blocks from the 2.3GHz band (23002400MHz) and the 120MHz spectrum in 12 blocks from the 2.6GHz band (25002690MHz).

Last year, the government achieved the highest Tk 7,634 claws by allocating a total of 27.4MHz spectra from the 1800MHz and 2100MHz bands.

At the beginning of 2018, the government earned about 3.94 billion Tk by selling the 16.6MHz spectrum to Banglalink and Grameenphone.

Government revenue aside, wireless services will be improved by reducing the user density per MHz in the spectrum after new frequency allocation. As of, Bangladesh's user occupancy per megahertz spectrum is 11 lakh, while Nepal and Myanmar are only 2-3 lakh.

Following the previous auction, Grameenphone's spectrum is now in three different bands: 47.4MHz, Robi 44MHz, Banglalink 40MHz and Teletalk 25.2MHz.

According to BTRC, Grameenphone, the country's largest mobile operator, still has the lowest user frequency range. Currently, over 17,000 Grameenphone subscribers occupy all MHz of the spectrum.

 Robi, the second largest operator, serves 11,000 subscribers on the same frequency, while Banglalink has 9,000 users in each MHz spectrum.