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From
left: Kirk Sookram, planning and managment engineer, TATT,
Cris Seecharan, acting executive director, TATT, Stuart
Jack and Laurence Dunbar, consultants with PriceWaterhouseCoopers
who supervised yesterday’s auction. Photo: Wendy-Ann
Duncan
BY
URVASHI TIWARI ROOPNARINE
THE cost of Internet and other information technology is
expected to become cheaper as the market has now become
more competitive.
Telstar Cable System Ltd and Green Dot Ltd have won bids
and are now eligible for ten-year spectrum licenses to begin
building the necessary wireless infrastructure to provide
broadband wireless services to the country.
They won the bids at an auction hosted by the Telecommunication
Authority of T&T (TATT) yesterday at the Normandie Hotel,
St Ann’s.
Three companies participated in the auction:
o
Green Dot Ltd
o
Telstar Cable Systems Ltd
o
Open Telecom Ltd
One company, Telstar, won all 12 blocks in the 12 GHz band
at $650,000 per block per annum. Telstar will now have to
pay a total of $7.8 million annually for spectrum awarded
in the 12 GHz band.
Green Dot won three blocks in the Lower 700 MHz band at
$177,000 per block per annum. The company will now have
to pay $531,000 per annum for spectrum awarded in that range.
There was no winning bidder in the auction of spectrum blocks
in the 28 GHz band.
TATT will now make recommendations to the Minister of Public
Administration to grant the relevant concessions for the
winning bidders to begin laying the infrastructure for the
broadband wireless services in the bands which the have
been awarded.
TATT said the auction was part of its mandate to ensure
that consumers have access to a variety of affordable information
and communication technologies, such as high speed data
services, broadband Internet and wireless subscription services.
The auction was supervised by consultants from PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
Five companies became eligible in January 2007 to take part
in the pre-qualification process for the auction. However,
only three participated in the auction.
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