When will we see the auction policy announced for the 700 MHz band?
This has been the hot discussion topic among the telecom policy wonks for the past few months. It is now reasonable for the smart money to be looking at dates a couple of months from now.
Why? Let’s look at how the announcement ties into the federal budget, which is scheduled now for March 29. At one time, a number of us thought it might be reasonable for the announcement to precede the budget. Our thinking was that the legislation required to liberalize foreign ownership in telecom carriers – likely to be announced prior to or as part of the auction policy – would be buried in the budget implementation bill as a means to expedite its passage. The federal government may still announce foreign ownership liberalization in the budget, under a heading of digital economy measures, without announcing the specifics of the spectrum auction.
The problem is that the auction can reasonably be expected to generate billions of dollars in revenues for the government. If the auction policy is announced immediately before, coincident or immediately after the tabling of the budget, it would be reasonable for the auction proceeds to be included in the revenue estimates for the budget. Since the AWS auction generated $4.25B, will this auction bring more or less?
But, the billions of dollars in windfall revenues is inconsistent with a budget that is expected to demand significant cuts in expenditures. Further, the government is not likely interested in signalling the amount of money it expects to raise. As the vendor, would you want to signal your baseline number, or allow the bidding to proceed unconstrained. Further, if the government is going to allocate 10-20MHz of spectrum to public safety, how would the opposition parties respond to cuts in services for various agencies when the government is choosing to forego auction revenues for up to 20% of the spectrum that is available?
So, the spectrum auction policy may continue to simmer away on the back burner until after the government passes its budget. Based on the 2011 Budget timetable, we could need a further 3 weeks from the time the Budget is tabled until it receives Royal Assent. The government may not want to announce its spectrum policy in that interim period, because of the magnitude of the funds that would be generated.
This theory implies that we won’t see a spectrum policy announcement for another month (to March 29) until the Budget is tabled, followed by at least 3 more weeks until the it is put to bed. That moves us toward late April or early May.
Of course, all of this is just an outside perspective that may have nothing to do with any of these considerations. Your comments, as always, are welcomed.
In any case, The 2012 Canadian Telecom Summit, taking place June 4-6 in Toronto, will be the place to debate the spectrum policy issues and we have a forum scheduled for the afternoon of June 6 to focus on precisely that area. No other event brings together all of the leading stakeholders for the sector that is driving Canada’s digital economy.
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