Airtel Bangladesh recently managed to grab 5MHz of 3G spectrum for a whopping $105 million. So its 734,282 Facebook fans in this region should be pretty pleased to hear that they will be offered access to the company’s 3G services soon enough.
The telecom giant announced this news to customers via its official Facebook and Twitter pages with the words ‘Be ready to get busy with Airtel 3G.’ And the reaction has been great so far. Apart from Airtel, Grameenphone, Banglalink Digital Communications and Robi Axiata also scraped shares of the spectrum that was being auctioned.
All in all, the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) raked in $525 million from the allotment of 3G airwaves in the 2.1GHz band. Except for Grameenphone which scooped up 10MHz of spectrum for $210 million, the rest of the aforementioned service providers each made $105 million deals for 5MHz of the same. Pacific Bangladesh Telecom which was also in the list of companies qualified for participating in the auction doesn’t appear to have joined the party for whatever reason.
Technically speaking, it’s a win for Airtel (as well as the other three) in the long run and we’re talking about a very long run. This has to do with the BTRC’s recent amendment to the 3G Cellular Mobile Phone Services Regulatory and Licensing Guidelines, 2013. The changes which were declared on the first of this month, specifically state that 3G network operators may be permitted to employ the spectrum they’ve won for providing 4G/LTE.
So if Airtel intends to deliver 4G/LTE in the future, no sweat. It could get the nod from the Bangladesh government for offering the same via 800MHz, 900MHz, 1800MHz or any similarly suitable band.