Daily Times

Licences of three mobile operators in Pakistan are up for renewal this year but despite the fact that the renewal seeks to ensure continuity of telecom services, provides predictability to the operators and generates revenue for the government, no framework for renewal has been issued by the Government or Regulator so far.

The telecom sector has voiced concerns over the timelines and said that the renewal procedures have been delayed as per the licence terms. The licence terms dictate that the process which started 30 months before the expiry should have been completed in early 2017 as per the requirements of the licence terms.

The industry sources have further said that delaying the process will little room for operators to maneuver on licence terms and getting their concerns addressed especially if two fundamental considerations are not taken into account — price of spectrum and ensuring level playing field.

“The renewal should come at affordable price for the operators to invest and expand their services and the renewal should be carried out in a way that it offers same price, terms and conditions to competing operators to ensure healthy and fair competition in the market.”

The operators have raised concerns with the authorities over high anticipated prices of renewal and have shown willingness to buy additional spectrum if renewal is priced at the same level of US$291M as that of Ufone’s in 2014 with the same conditions.

A telecom expert has mentioned that instead of looking to generate maximum revenue from renewal the Government should price renewals at US $291M and attract additional revenue from sale of additional spectrum at the latest prices. “In addition to renewing the three licences at combined original price of US$ 873 million, government has over 2x40MHz spectrum available in existing bands that it should sell for an additional US$ 1.3 billion, bringing in over US$2 billion to the economy.

Another industry expert has said that “Creating artificial scarcity of spectrum to push prices up is not necessarily a good strategy. Every single day that available commercial spectrum is not used means that government is losing out on revenue and consumer experience of telecom services is being compromised.”

PTA spokesperson did not answer Daily Times’ queries in this regard.