URCA: Spectrum auction begins

Mon, Sep 28th 2015, 10:33 PM

After some delay, and amid increasingly wild speculation, the Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority (URCA) announced yesterday that the spectrum auction for the selection of the second cellular licensee began yesterday morning, with Cable Bahamas Limited and Virgin Mobile Bahamas Limited participating.

The auction is a multi-round process with bidders placing ascending financial bids in each round, which will continue until there is a single remaining winning bidder. In the end, then, although URCA did not say it explicitly, winning the auction will come down to financial strength, and it is difficult for the public to judge which of the two candidates is stronger, given the absence of information in the public arena about Virgin Mobile Bahamas Limited.

As noted by Guardian Business in May 2015, the ownership of Virgin Mobile Bahamas remains hidden behind a veil of confidentiality. All that is ascertainable is that Virgin Mobile Company Limited was incorporated in The Bahamas on June 26, 2014 as company number 62806. The name Virgin Mobile Bahamas Limited was reserved on July 9, 2014, and the name was changed to Virgin Mobile Bahamas Ltd. on February 2, 2015. The company also paid the $1,000 fee for the year 2015 on that day. That is all. Cable Bahamas, however, is a publicly traded company that has had operating income of more than $22 million per year since 2010, and more than $29 million in two of those years.

URCA announced that the auction had begun yesterday afternoon, reiterating that in November 2014, Prime Minister Perry Christie, the minister responsible for the electronic communications sector (ECS), decided the method for allocating and pricing cellular mobile spectrum in accordance with Section 30 of the Communications Act, 2009. The government then initiated a competitive selection process that would result in the authorization of one additional cellular provider.

Guardian Business reported in May that the spectrum auction had been scheduled to begin at that time, but was delayed for undisclosed reasons. At the time, the process was already nearly three weeks past Prime Minister Christie's initial projection that the selection of the candidate would happen by the end of April 2015. Instead, as URCA reported yesterday, the technical assessment of proposals was completed in April 2015, executed and managed by the Cellular Liberalization Task Force (CLTF). That was phase one of a two-phase process, with the spectrum auction - for which URCA is responsible - being the second and final phase.

"At the conclusion of the auction, an announcement will be made in accordance with the process," URCA said. "The new cellular operator will require an individual operating license and an individual spectrum license from the Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority."

Click here to read more at The Nassau Guardian

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