Samart wins 3G auction

[Coss]

Samart Corporation won today's TOT Plc auction for a 20-billion-baht 3G (third generation) wireless broadband network expansion.

 

The e-auction was held on Friday morning after the Administrative Court last night rejected Ericsson's petition to halt the bidding.

 

[color:red]The reserve bid price was set at 17.440 billion baht.[/color] There were 17 bids.

 

The SL consortium of Samart, Loxley, Nokia Siemens Networks and Huawei Technologies [color:red]won the auction with a minimum bid of 16.29 billion baht[/color], which was 6.59 per cent less than the reserve price. The contract is scheduled to be signed next month.

 

[color:red]The AU consortium of Advanced Information Technology and United Communications submitted a bid of 16.77 billion baht.[/color]

 

True Move, the country's third-largest mobile phone operator, and state-owned CAT Telecom yesterday signed a deal to develop a Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) network into a High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) network.

 

Both firms wanted to provide 3G mobile services quickly by turning 3,000 CDMA base stations nationwide to HSPA base stations by the end of this year.

 

Meanwhile, a meeting of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission selection committee today chsose Jaturong Panyadilok, permanent secretary at the Prime Minister’s Office, as the committee’s chairman.

 

Reports said the meeting also made Okas Teparakul, chairman of the National Economic and Social Development Advisory Council, the deputy chairman.

 

Assoc Prof Yubol Benjarongkij, chair of the Association of Academics in the Field of Journalism and Mass Communications of Thailand, was appointed secretary-general.

 

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Comment: Now I might be stupid, but I thought that the point of a reserve price was that it wouldn't sell below that number.

 

And also that if it's an auction than the highest bid wins.

 

This doesn't look like an auction it looks like a negotiated tender.

 

Discuss?

[Pom Michael]

Don't ask.

 

No one - and I mean no one knows what is really going on. I'm typing this on 3G in Thailand - so really this is just smoke and mirrors - the real story behind all of this is what????

[radioman]

They call it an e-auction but what happens is that for about an hour all of the various bidders put in ther best price, this is seen and can be countered by all others until I think the last 20 minutes when it becomes best guess time. Well that's their theory. In practice it's just another Thai scam and mostly the bidders work together for the desired result though the public face is designed to look good.

 

Whatever, I just want to know when can I get 3G in the sticks and how much a month for unlimited.