The Private Investment Promotion Agency of Peru (Proinversión), one of whose responsibilities is to foster investment in infrastructure projects through public-private partnerships, is asking for bidders for two projects involving the provision of public telecommunications services in Peru’s urban and rural areas.
The two projects – in the Advanced Wireless Services-3 (AWS-3) bands and 2.3GHz bands – aim to guarantee that 1,561 locations, which currently do not have any type of mobile coverage, benefit from 4G services.
The AWS-3 band offering involves 30MHz blocks in the 1,750 – 1,780 MHz and in the 2,150 – 2,180MHz frequency ranges. The 2.3GHz band offering is for a 30MHz block in the 2,300 – 2,330MHz frequency range.
This will apparently be a single concession contract – that is, it will be awarded, in each case, to the bidder who obtains the highest score, depending on the offer – against certain mandatory investment commitments involving rolling out a number of locations in the shortest time.
This means that the winner of the AWS-3 band must deploy a mobile telecoms network to cover a minimum of 1,171 rural towns distributed throughout the entire Peruvian territory. At least 118 of them will be located in the Valley of the Apurímac, Ene and Mantaro rivers and in the jungle area of the country.
The winner of the 2.3GHz band sale will have to deploy a network to cover a minimum of 390 rural towns, also distributed throughout the whole of Peru.
If all goes according to plan, 1,561 towns, with more than 300,000 inhabitants, will eventually have a 4G mobile service they could not previously access.