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New company airYotta joins Australia’s TPG Telecom, fibre operator MyRepublic in race for spectrum licence.
Australia’s TPG Telecom on Friday revealed it is one of three companies to have applied to take part in Singapore’s upcoming spectrum auction, which aims to facilitate the entry of a fourth player in the country’s mobile market.
Singapore’s Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) has reserved 60 MHz of spectrum in the 900 MHz and 2.3 GHz bands for a newcomer, setting a reserve price of S$35 million (€22.5 million).
"The auction represents an opportunity to establish innovative and exciting mobile telecommunications products which will support Singapore’s evolving smart nation capabilities," said TPG Telecom, in a stock exchange filing.
The Straits Times reports that local fibre operator MyRepublic has also applied to take part.
According to the news outlet, TPG Telecom and MyRepublic could be joined by a new company, airYotta, formed by former executives of OMGTel. OMGTel is owned by distributed antenna system (DAS) maker Consistel, and had been expected to apply to participate in the auction; however, no application was submitted.
Prospective bidders had until 1 September to apply to take part. The IDA now has 20 days to accept or reject their applications.
The new entrant auction is expected to take place in October. Once that has been completed, the IDA plans to sell off additional frequencies to the country’s existing mobile operators, Singtel, Starhub and M1.
