Advanced Television

Thailand DTT 49 bidders

September 19, 2013

By Chris Forrester

Thailand’s National Broadcasting & Telecommunicatons Commission has ‘sold’ 49 bid documents to a total of 33 companies over the past few days. Each is seeking capacity on one of the 24 commercial TV licences on the nation’s digital terrestrial system.

The broadcasting regulator is in the preliminary stage for the digital terrestrial TV auction which will likely take place by the end of this year or early in 2014. For the seven SD channels up for grabs, 17 companies have bought the bid documents and 12 companies have picked up the bid documents for the seven HD variety channels. Some prominent companies and corporations that have picked up the documents are the National Media Group, TrueVisions, Thai Rath and Bangkok Broadcasting Television. MCOT picked up the documents for children’s TV channels as well as variety programmes in both SD and HD. NBC Next Vision picked up a singular document for a news channel.

However picking up the bid documents will not necessarily mean that the companies will be able part of the auction when it occurs. NBTC will be taking 45 days to deliberate and scrutinise the profiles of the companies that will be bidding and approving them accordingly.

Categories: Articles, Broadcast, DTT/DSO