Jordan Delays 3G License Tender

Jordan's telecoms regulator, the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) has announced that it is postponing issuing the tender for 3G licenses and that a new date will be announced soon.

TRC stated that this decision came as result of the requests presented by Zain Jordan, Orange cellular and XPress, companies last week. These requests asked TRC to consider postponing the date of launching the tender document due to the holidays during the month of December which might impede making the required preparations by those companies and completing their business plans.

Based on the earlier tender documents, the reserve price for the spectrum is set at 25 Million Jordanian Dinars for a paired block of (5 MHz) of spectrum, which specify the minimum fees of this band and it does not include the evacuation charges and the annual returns. The bidders are free to obtain 10 or 15 or 20 paired MHz.

The winner of the said tender or the incumbent operators can acquire the 2G spectrum license separately from the tender against an acquisition fee which equates to 130% of the winning price of the tender. Therefore, the minimum fees to grant the 2G spectrum is (32,500,000) million JD for a pair of (5 MHz).

The Mobile World subscriber tracker notes that the country ended the first half of the year with just over 5 million mobile phone users - representing a population penetration level of 81.6%.

Posted to the site on 15th December 2008