Call for Bids for Mobile Phone Frequency Bands

Under Decree No. 671/2014, published on May 12, 2014, the Argentine Government rendered null and void the assignment of frequencies (Decree No. 2426/12, sections 2, 3 and 6) provided to the Empresa Argentina de Soluciones Satelitales S.A. (AR-SAT). These frequencies correspond to the service called "3G" and are the same ones that the company Movistar (a merger between Movicom with Unifon) returned to the Argentine Government, because they exceeded the maximum allowed band of 50MHz as a consequence of the referred merger.
Moreover, Decree No. 671/2014 orders to attribute the bands between 698 to 806 MHz, 1710-1770 MHz, 2110-2170 MHz exclusively for land mobile telecommunications services. These frequencies will be used for the provision of mobile communications services through the system called "4G".
Furthermore, the Decree also instructed the Secretary of Communications, Ministry of Federal Planning, Public Investment and Services ("SECOM") to proceed to a call for bids for both the 3G and 4G frequencies as described above. For this purpose, the SECOM must formulate and approve the respective bidding terms and conditions and call for a bid to award these bands.
During the presentation, that was led by the Ministers of Economy (Axel Kicillof) and Federal Planning (Julio de Vido), the Secretary of Communications, Norberto Berne, stated that after the call for bids, the system will double the allocation of the current resources, raising it from 170 to 380 megahertz. Therefore, the Government considered that a fourth mobile phone operator could enter the local market.
Although there is not yet a start date for the bidding process, nor is it clear whether there will be one call for bids for both 3G and 4G bands or two separate ones, the government officials pointed out that the former will be “soon” and will take from "six to eight months."
According to the whereas of the decree, the public tender should be developed in accordance with the principles of efficiency, non-discriminatory treatment, promoting competition, ensuring the rights of users and promoting access for people living in areas where mobile communications services are not being delivered.