BUENOS AIRES, Argentina—The National Telecommunications Council of Ecuador announced that it will auction three wireless local loop (WLL) licenses on 15 April. The companies that are interested can purchase the tender documents between 28 January and 27 March 27.
The bandwidths to be auctioned provide national coverage over the 3.4 GHz to 3.7 GHz band and will be in effect for 15 years. The spectrum is designated for the provision of fixed local telephony, point-to-point data transmission and public telephony. The base price for the three licenses is to be announced in March.
This auction is framed within a telecommunications liberalization process being organized by President Gustavo Noboa Bejarano’s management. The process includes opening the fixed telephony marketing beginning in January 2002, the privatization of state-owned companies Pacifictel and Andinatel, and the auction of mobile telephony frequencies over 1800 MHz and local multipoint distribution services (LMDS) licenses at 25.5 GHz to 27.5GHz and 31 GHz to 31.3GHz in the second half of 2002.
