TATT Awards Wireless Broadband Licenses

Cable operators Telstar Cable System and Green Dot have each won 10-year spectrum licenses for broadband and wireless services.Telstar won all 12 blocks in the 12Ghz band at US$650,000 per block per year, meaning a total of US$7.8mn a year, the report said.Green Dot took three blocks in the lower 700Mhz band, at US$177,000 per block per year, which adds up to US$531,000 a year, the report said.

While Green Dot is already an authorized wireless Internet provider, one of the company’s directors, Ajmal Nazir, indicated that the three blocks of 700 MHz frequency they acquired at the auction will allow them to provide the service to customers at all areas of the country.

“This frequency can travel through trees and along the coasts and will allow internet services to reach a whole new group of customers who were before too marginalized to access wireless High-speed net,” Nazir said last Friday.

In January 2007 five companies qualified to bid for this spectrum, but only three participated on the day. The third bidder, Open Telecom, did not win a spectrum. Spectrum blocks in the 28GHz band were also on offer, but did not attract bids.

The telecoms regulator TATT will now make recommendations to Trinidad’s minister of public administration to grant the relevant concessions for the winning bidders to begin laying the infrastructure for their wireless broadband services.

TATT hailed the auction as a way to ensure that consumers have access to a variety of affordable information and communication technologies, such as high-speed data services, broadband internet and wireless subscription services.

In his address at the press conference at Hotel Normandie, St Ann’s following the auction sale, executive director of TATT Cris Seecharan said the opening of the information and communication technologies market would allow more competition and therefore give citizens a chance to access cheaper data services such as Internet and Cable TV.

source:allyuh.com