Thailand's telecoms regulator National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) plans to auction WiMAX, 3.9G (LTE) licences in September.

"The NTC board has agreed to use spectrum of 2.3 GHz and 2.5 GHz for the high-speed broadband service," said Col Natee Sukonrat, an NTC commissioner. Issuing WiMax licences should help expand coverage of broadband Internet services in Thailand, further he added.

Regulator plans to allocate a maximum of 30 MHz to each provider, and would announce details at a public hearing in July.

NTC plans to publish a draft for licences of the 3.9 (LTE) generation of mobile service this week and expected an auction to be held in September.

The country's largest mobile operator Advanced Info Service (AIS), however has given a mixed response to the government's proposal. AIS chief executive Wichian Mektrakarn said the NTC had shown a progressive vision by proposing to move straight to 3.9G and bypass the stillborn 3G. However, he said limited bandwidth resources may make it difficult to adopt the new technology

source: Reuters