PTA announcement: Spectrum auction for AJK and G-B on December 4

WLL licenses will give operators right to provide services within specified area

KARACHI: The Pakistan Telecommu-nication Authority (PTA) has announced that it will hold a spectrum auction of wireless local loop (WLL) licenses for the Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJ&K) and Gilgit Baltistan (G-B) regions on December 4.

According to an Information Memorandum (IM) - a policy document for the auction on the PTA website - the telecom sector’s regulatory body will award two licences of 5Megahertz (MHz) each in the 1,900MHz band at a base price of Rs56 million, Rs12 million and Rs8 million for Mirpur, Muzaffarabad and northern areas, respectively. The 1,900 MHz band is used in both 2G and 4G technology.

The PTA will also auction two 30MHz unpaired lots in 3.5GHz band at a base price of Rs8 million, Rs3.2 million and Rs3.2 million for Mirpur, Muzaffarabad and northern areas, respectively.

Read: PTA chief suggests infrastructure sharing for cost efficiency

The aforementioned areas were not included in the April-2014 spectrum auction of 3G and 4G licences because of their special political status. G-B, for example, is an autonomous self-governing region with a separate administrative setup.

Unlike 3G and 4G mobile broadband licences, which were awarded last year to the four cellular operators, the WLL licenses give operators the right to provide services within a specified area.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 18^th, 2015.

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