It has in fact recommended few things which are as following:
- Auction 3G licenses only, and remove the terms 4G/LTE and technology neutral from licensing draft
- 4G/LTE will be licensed later for earning more money
- Increase the base price from US $ 210mn to US $ 291
- No defaulter will be able to participate in the bidding – PTCL in this case
- 50% of the licensing amount will be paid in 30 days and rest will divided in 5 equal installments in local currency
- WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
- First thing, the base price is not low – our friends at TelecomPK.net have discussed this already
- This is the only chance to get the telecom investor into the country. 2 years down the line, the saturation and economic conditions will make it impossible for you to attract anyone. Just consider how ripe it could be to auction 3G in 2008-2009 as compared to now?
- 3G will not only bring the license fee, but there are so many other things we should look at, for example:
- $ 500 million of investment per operator at least, $ 1 billion would be a good figure to quote though. And this figure is for for the first year only.
- Telecom market, which is in stagnation for last 2-3 years, will revive, there will be happenings, infrastructure roll out, expansions…
- Revival of all telecom associated businesses, such as franchises, retailors, vendors, sub vendors, procurement, VAS, IT, networking, handsets and what not
- New jobs, hundreds of thousands of them
- Just imagine if there are 25 million broadband users instead of currently 1.5 million users – I can’t even dream of such a huge market and opportunities Pakistani businesses will have in such an environment. I bet PayPal and Google will get to their knees – which don’t consider Pakistan even an economy now
