PENDING legislation, the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) will take an administrative track to solving what stakeholders deemed as a spectrum mess in the telecommunications sector.

Eliseo M. Rio Jr., the chief of the ICT department, said re-farming and reallocating radio frequencies is a task so complex and difficult that it needs legislative action.

But without legislation, his group may need to find ways to help the government manage precious and limited spectrum in the telco sector.

“We will have a review of all the frequencies. Those [that] are not being used will be taken back. But it’s hard to reclaim frequencies, because we will need to bring that to the court,” Rio said. “So we are thinking of ways to withdraw them in an administrative manner.”

To wit, he said, the government may choose to increase spectrum users’ fees—a tariff imposed on companies that use air waves for commercial distribution—for frequencies that are unused or underutilized.

“That way, it becomes uneconomical for them to hold on to the frequencies so that is one way to do that,” Rio said.

He noted that legislative action is still needed to buttress the government’s policy on spectrum management, as current rules allow telcos to bring to court frequency reassignment and re-farming.

“We actually need a law to strengthen the guidelines, because we may face court actions if we simply withdraw frequencies. But if it is part of the law of the land, the court will be the one to implement the law,” Rio said.

The DICT chief added his group is also conducting a review of policies in other territories to find best practices and apply them locally.

“We are doing that now, except we just need a little refinement, before we really come up with a policy guideline,” he said. “One is to come up with some way, pending legislation, to determine the efficient use of frequencies — subjecting them to review on traffic usage.”

Issues pertaining to spectrum management in the Philippines has been a hot topic for years now, and has become even more prominent now that the government is hell-bent on taking in a new player to challenge the two incumbents in the country’s telecommunications sector.

During a public hearing held last week, a lawyer representing a prospective bidder for the third telco spot raised the issue on spectrum availability, noting  the remaining frequencies are “very thin” for the third player to compete with the incumbents, Smart Communications Inc. and Globe Telecom Inc.

Based on government data, PLDT Inc. holds 400 megahertz of the total spectrum holdings, while Globe has rights to 325 MHz.

What remains is a swathe of 225 MHz of frequencies in the 700 MHz, 2100 MHz, 2.5 gigahertz, 3.3 GHz and 3.5 GHZ bands.

At home, spectrum—deemed as digital real estates that act as conduit for data transfer—is usually assigned, not auctioned.

In other parts of the globe, governments bid out frequencies to create additional revenue streams.

Auctioning off frequencies is a two-pronged strategy that could help the government create more wealth for public use and ensure telcos would efficiently use the allocations that they secured.

Spectrum is the real estate on which telecommunication operators develop their respective network to deliver services to customers.

The amount of spectrum assigned to a telco has an impact on the cost to build capacity, overall network performance, ability to offer new multimedia services and general customer experience of wireless services.

The third player is expected to be named by December. The government is at the onset of the “legal process” for the selection of the new major player in the telco market.

Bid documents for the third telco spot will be available on September 26. Bid submission will be scheduled about one or two months after.

Local groups interested in the third telco spot are Philippine Telegraph and Telephone Corp., Now Corp. Converge ICT Solutions Inc., EasyCall Communications Philippines Inc., Transpacific Broadband Group International Inc. and TierOne Communications International Inc.

Foreign groups that have so far signified their interest are: China Telecom, Korea Telecom, LG+, Vietnam Telecom, Telenor, AT&T and a Japanese telco provider.