Philippines Regulator Defies Court Ban - Consults on Remaining 3G License

The Philippines telecoms regulator, the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) has gone ahead with a public consulation on plans to award a fifth 3G license - despite a court order forbidding the award of the license.

The regulator said that it believed that consultations did not breach the terms of the court order - which had also forbidden the regulator to consider awarding the license.

NTC director Edgardo Cabarios said, "This draft circular on 3G, if approved, is only a continuation of the first circular on 3G. The same rules are stated here. Since there were no more qualified applicants when the four 3G licenses were awarded we decided not to award the fifth 3G permit. Thus, existing 3G players are already disqualified from applying,"

There are currently two licenses, held by Globe Telecom, Digital Mobile - while Smart owns a 3rd license in its own name and recently brought rival operator, CURE which owned the remaining 3G license.

The regulator is seeking to bar the existing license holders from bidding for any remaining 3G spectrum - a move which is being opposed by the operators.

The NTC gave attendees until the third week of January to comment on the government's plan to award the last license.

Another operator, Bayan Telecommunications has been engaged in a lengthy legal battle to overturn a previous decision not to award a license to the company.

Bayan had argued that the the process of awarding the licenses was flawed as the decision was based on a specific points based system, which the operator argued was not made clear in the tender documents. The regulator awarded the licenses to those operators who secured a high score on a 30-point scoring system.

Bayan is the largest wireless landline provider running on the CDMA platform in Philippines, and it is the majority owner of the second-largest long-distance backbone network.

Posted to the site on 12th January 2009