No need to wait for digital transition to do 700 MHz auction: Clement

Minister Tony Clement would like to get started on an auction for the 700 MHz spectrum band before the digital television transition is complete, he told Cartt.ca. “I’ve been having a number of consultations with a number of telecoms who have raised the issue of the 700 MHz and it occurs to me that things don’t have to be sequential,” Clement told Cartt in an interview. “You don’t have to finish all of the work to clear the bandwidth and then start on working out the details of the auction.” Similarly, Clement tweeted last week: “Finished a meeting with telecom provider Huawei. They are set to hire more . I've concluded we must get the 700mHz auction going soon.” In a research note, Canaccord Genuity head of research Dvai Ghose said he did not expect the 700 MHz spectrum auction to take place before 2012. The spectrum is currently used for over-the-air analogue television signals and will be freed from that use when broadcasters switch to digital over-the-air signals by the deadline of Aug. 31, 2011. In the United States, the 700 MHz spectrum was auctioned a year before that country’s digital transition deadline on June 12, 2009. Ghose wrote that Canada's telecom incumbents "continue to dominate the wireless landscape and have openly questioned the survivability of independent new entrants,” and that the Conservative government has made it clear that it wants more competition, lower prices and greater innovation in the Canadian wireless sector. Ghose added that Industry Canada’s 2008 AWS spectrum auction rules—in which the government set aside spectrum for new entrants—may have been “good first steps” in achieving the government’s objectives. For the 700 MHz auction, Ghose said the government could set up the auction to support new entrants by limiting the amount of spectrum the incumbents can purchase; preventing incumbents from bidding; lifting foreign ownership restrictions for new entrants to open up their access to capital and ability to bid in the auction; and increasing the spectrum fees for incumbents, which are up for renewal next year. Ghose added that BCE Inc. and Telus Corp. would have an advantage over Rogers Communications Inc. if incumbent carriers are allowed to participate in the 700 MHz auction because they share national spectrum and could combine their resources.

No need to wait for digital transition to do 700 MHz auction: Clement

Brief | September 15, 2010

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