SAO PAULO, Brazil(AP)-Brazil’s telecommunications regulator Anatel said Friday it had suspended next week’s planned auction for the first three of nine new licenses due to lack of bidders.
Analysts said the agency had asked too high a price, chosen the wrong technology and-most importantly-got its timing wrong.
Anatel President Renato Guerreiro told a news conference in the federal capital, Brasilia, that the sale would not take place as slated next Tuesday. But he said auctions for the second and third groups of three licenses would go ahead as planned Feb. 20 and March 13 respectively.
The three groups of licenses are known here, respectively, as Bands C, D, and E.
The Band C licenses were priced higher than those for Bands D and E because they were to start operating in July, six months ahead of the other two bands. That was supposed to allow holders to establish market share before facing fresh competition.
“This is not what we wanted,” Guerreiro said Thursday after only one sealed envelope containing a non-valid bid for Band C was submitted. “We were expecting more participants.”
The suspension was a blow to Anatel’s hopes of redrawing the map of Brazil’s national wireless coverage and to the government’s expectations of collecting at least $2.4 billion for the nine new concessions.
Anatel was asking minimums of between $270 million and $500 million for each of the licenses, depending on the size and population of their operating region.
Guerreiro insisted Thursday that the minimum prices had been calculated with “absolute precision.”
