Costa Rican regulator Sutel has reportedly restarted the country’s 5G spectrum auction process, following the dismissal by The Comptroller General of the Republic (CGR) of most of the objections of Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (Grupo ICE), the Costa Rican government-run electricity and telecommunications services provider.
There was apparently an error in the annex to the specifications, relating to coverage guarantees. This was one of ICE’s objections and one of the few to be accepted. The error has now been corrected.
However, ICE also objected to spectrum caps, which effectively mean that it can’t compete for more mid-range spectrum – that is, spectrum from 1GHz to 6GHz. This, along with most other ICE objections, has been rejected.
In fact ICE has so far held up the auction process with this argument twice, most recently at the end of September, although there had also been earlier objections from operators Claro and Liberty.
Now, however, Sutel aims to resume with the new deadlines and will be able to receive applications from bidders interested in the spectrum.
In fact on 24 October, Sutel published the notice of the 5G tender in the country’s Official Gazette, through which it restarted the remaining period of 12 working days granted for the receipt of offers from those who want to participate in the bid.
Once this part of the process is complete, Sutel will proceed with the evaluation and pre-selection of offers to define who will be the eligible bidders. Once the pre-selection is formalised, the start of actual bidding for spectrum will be scheduled.
As long ago as February last year we reported that all three Costa Rican operators – Liberty, Claro and ICE – had shown interest in acquiring new spectrum for mobile services in the country. APM Terminals, ICE and Liberty were also reportedly interested in implementing private mobile networks, as were a number of cooperatives.
