Anatel Likely to Offer Tender for 3G Licenses Next Year

A tender for third generation (3G) licenses in Brazil is not likely to happen until next year, local news service Agência Estado reported telecoms regulator Anatel board member Pedro Jaime Ziller as saying.

Auctions for both 3.5GHz and 10GHz spectrum licenses for WiMax services and 3G are greatly anticipated by operators but Anatel continues to give vague estimations of actual dates for an auction.

Ziller said this week that Anatel is likely to release bidding rules for the WiMax auction in the next two months. An auction for WiMax was postponed in September last year by federal accounts court TCU that alleged there were irregularities in the bidding rules.

As regards 3G, Ziller said Anatel's board had received a proposed model for the 3G auction from technical specialists on May 29 and that bidding rules ought to be ready by the end of 2007, specialist telecoms publication Teletime reported.

"We are studying different bidding rules.... Rather than an auction simply based on price, the payment will also include social obligations," Agência Estado reported Ziller as saying."

Posted to the site on 4th June 2007