Court lifts ban on awarding BWA frequency reallocation

The Regional Trial Court of Quezon City has decided to lift the injunctive writ which barred the regulator, the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), from implementing its 2005 frequency reallocation plan, according to a report in local newspaper The Business Mirror. The ruling means that domestic broadband wireless access (BWA) service providers can now push ahead with their own network expansion plans, while the NTC is free to resume the process of awarding BWA frequencies to those companies with pending applications. The allocation of broadband frequency spectrum has been frozen for about eight months, but Judge Hilario Laqui of the Regional Trial Court adjudged the presence of an injunction would undermine the growth of broadband sector to the detriment of the state, the private sector and the general public. ‘Moreover, the fact cannot be discounted that with the bandwidths of the writ of injunction, the other assignees of the other frequency bandwidths enumerated in the NTC circular are deprived of the use of their assigned frequencies,’ Hilario Laqui said. The court’s decision came from a case filed by Altimax Broadcasting Company, which sought to stop the NTC from implementing its 2005 frequency reallocation circular.