The Office of the Telecommunications Authority today issued a consultation paper on the licensing of mobile services on expiry of the existing licences for second generation mobile services.

There are 11 2G licences. They are due to expire between July 2005 and September 2006.

The consultation aims to solicit views from the industry and interested parties on the future licensing arrangements after these 2G licences expire. 

The licensing arrangements would reflect how the spectrum currently occupied by existing operators would be allocated and how the newly available spectrum could be used to facilitate service migration.

The issues covered by the consultation include spectrum availability and allocation, spectrum utilisation fee, and licence conditions.

The Government is prepared to consider offering a "right of first refusal" to the existing 2G licensees. 

This aims to provide a stable investment environment and minimise the potential disturbance to existing 2G customers.

However, for licences covering frequency bands which have not been actively developed or marketed, hence resulting in low spectrum utilisation efficiency, the authority said it might be more reasonable for the Government to allocate these bands through competitive bidding for more efficient spectrum use.

The new licensees will be able to provide 3G services or similar advanced mobile services.

There is therefore a need to consider whether or not, and if so, how, spectrum utilisation fees should be levied to maintain a level playing field in the market among the 3G licensees, who are paying spectrum utilisation fees under their licences, and these new licensees.

The authority will review submissions to the consultation and put forward its preferred options in a second round of consultation.

The consultation will last for two months. 

Interested parties are invited to submit their views on the issues raised in the consultation paper to the authority on or before October 2. The paper can be downloaded from the authority's website.