Far EasTone (FET) has called on Taiwan’s National Communications Commission (NCC) to deal fairly with matters concerning spectrum that are expected to arise from the proposed merger of Taiwan Mobile and Taiwan Star. Local press outlet The Taipei Times notes that the urging from FET comes ahead of two public hearings that are scheduled to be held by the regulator this week regarding the proposed tie-up of the two companies, as well as FET’s planned acquisition of rival Asia Pacific Telecom.
With the Taiwan Mobile-Taiwan Star merger expected to give the enlarged entity a total of 60MHz of spectrum in the sub-1GHz band range, FET has highlighted that this would surpass the upper limit of one-third of all auctioned spectrum in that range, which was set under the ‘Regulations for Administration of Mobile Broadband Businesses’. For its part, Taiwan Mobile has argued that such a spectrum cap would be unreasonable in the wake of the two planned mergers, and has instead suggested that the NCC relax the rules so that the limit companies can hold be raised to 40% of all auctioned sub-1GHz spectrum.