Thailand’s Supreme Administrative Court upheld an earlier decision to halt the country’s 3G auctions, which was due to have begun on Monday (20 September). The country’s authorities will now need to scrap the current process completely, and no timeframe has been given for when a new procedure could begin. At the core of the dispute is a complaint from Thailand’s state-owned operators that the regulator, the National Telecommunications Commission, lacks the legitimacy to oversee the process. The country’s constitution says that a new independent watchdog, the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission, must be established to govern the country’s media industry, but a draft bill creating this new body is still in the parliamentary pipeline.

The long delays to the process means that Thailand is already behind many of its Southast Asian counterparts with regard to 3G rollouts, and the latest decision indicates that this is not likely to change in the near future.  The issue of the new licences is seen as a way to increase competition in the country’s telecoms sector, with the potential to bring new international players into the market – SingTel and Telenor already have a presence in the country. The actions of the state-owned players also indicate a desire by these companies to protect the current status quo, as much as a need to ensure due process is followed. With the need to now create a new regulator and re-start the entire 3G process from scratch, it has been suggested it could be more than two years before the country is back in the position it is now – still without the licences having been issued.