Bahrain's telecoms regulator, the TRA says that only one company has submitted a formal tender for the country's third mobile operator license - although four companies had registered for the tender.
The sole bidder is Saudi Telecommunications Company (STC) The regulator's evaluation team has now started evaluating the technical and commercial aspects of the bid to ensure that they meet the qualification criteria of the Auction.
TRA plans to open the financial bid on 22 January 2009, but only after establishing that the bid, as submitted, passes the technical requirements as set out in the auction rules.
Mr. Alan Horne, the TRA General Director stated "In designing the auction process, TRA adopted international best practice in order to award the Licence to a strong player who can provide innovative mobile services, compete with the current providers and maximize the benefits to consumers in Bahrain".
It is worth noting that TRA initiated the auction process to award the third mobile licence eleven months ago as part of the strategic and retail market review published in February 2008. In April 2008 TRA issued an expression of interest document inviting the industry to provide comments on some aspects of the award process, and launched the auction process in mid September 2008. At the request of the companies who have registered for the auction, TRA delayed the process twice effectively extending the time allowed to formulate and submit bids by 2 months from November 13th 2008 to January 11th 2009.
Posted to the site on 13th January 2009
Posted to: www.cellular-news.com/story/35476.php