ISLAMABAD: The bids of four mobile
operators of Pakistan qualified for the auction of 3G and 4G licenses,
Chairman of Pakistan Telecommunications Authority, Ismail Shah, told
Dawn on Thursday.
Shah said that the four companies,
namely Mobilink, Telenor, Ufone and Zong, were not defaulters of the
government and the legal aspects of their bids had been scrutinised by
the PTA and its consultants.
Another senior official, requesting
not to be named, told Dawn that $210 million had been received as a
'non-refundable' pre-bid deposit, which was 15 per cent of the base
price of the bid amount and was required to qualify for the
participation in the auction.
Pakistan is set to hold long-awaited auctions for 3G and 4G network licences on April 23.
Finance Minister Ishaq Dar had said on Wednesday,
that the auction of next generation licences was expected to fetch the
national exchequer $1.3 billion and create employment opportunities for
about 100,000 people.
Bids to the long-awaited auction of
next-generation cellphone spectrum licences were submitted on April 14
about which the PTA had said that the response received from four
existing cellular mobile operators of Pakistan was “very encouraging and
satisfactory for the PTA”, while also rubbishing reports of a dismal response by a foreign news agency.
Pakistan is the only major country in the region that still does not offer 3G services. Its neighbour, war-ravaged Afghanistan, launched 3G services in 2012.
Senate sub-committee recommends cancellation of auction
On the other hand, the sub-committee of the Senate Standing Committee
on Information Technology on Wednesday recommended the government and
PTA to halt the process of auctioning 3G and 4G spectrum licenses,
scheduled to take place on April as it did not fulfill the requirements
of law.
The meeting presided by Senator Zahid Khan, Convener
Sub-committee of the Senate Standing Committee on Information
Technology, said its recommendations would be sent to its parent body, the Senate Standing Committee on Information Technology.
Senator
Zahid Khan, said that PTA was incomplete and the reply of the Federal
Ministry of Law and the PTA in this regard was not satisfactory.
The sub-committee asked the government to to maintain the PTA’s quorum before going ahead with the auction.
The
sub-committee said that any action/activity carried out without
filling the post of the member compliance and enforcement in the
Pakistan Telecommunication Authority would be ‘illegal’ including the 3G
and 4G auction.
The position in the three-member Authority has been lying vacant for long.
The other members are the chairman and member finance. The Cabinet Division had last advertised to fill the seat in June 2013.
The
sub-committee also suggested that Ufone should be excluded from the
auction as majority of its shares were owned by the government and also
because Etisalat International Pakistan, which had bought a 26 per cent
stake in the company, still owed the government USD800m.
Sub-committee
member Faisal Raza Abidi claimed that a company which was the
government’s defaulter, was included in the auction process adding that
any company owned by the government or owing money to the Universal Services Fund (USF) could not be included in the auction.
He
further said that the motive of the Sub-committee was not to halt the
auction process but to ensure the fulfillment of the requirements of the
law.
Abidi also suggested the holding of separate auctions for
the 3G and 4G licenses claiming that it would help generate additional
revenue of $1.5 billion.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Supreme Court of Pakistan,
had said that the auction would not be affected by the recent
sensationalism of the issue on the media and that the auction would
proceed as scheduled.
The apex court also ordered that the
proceeds of the auction should be kept in the Federal Consolidated Fund
(FCF) until it settles a dispute about the custody of the Universal
Services Fund (USF).
The three-judge bench headed by Justice
Jawwad S. Khawaja was hearing a petition of an IT expert, Khurram
Shehzad Chughtai, who had sought a directive for the auction of 3G
spectrum license, after a row had cropped up when the government
transferred the Rs62 billion fund meant exclusively for the telecom
sector to the FCF from the ministry of information technology.
http://www.dawn.com/news/1100496/four-mobile-operators-qualify-for-3g-4g-auction
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