According to the official version, Singapore just got everything right when it came to assigning its LTE spectrum. The reserve prices for the latest tranches of spectrum was set with such precision that demand and supply were in perfect harmony and no nasty, and potentially de-stabilising, bidding war broke out.
Rather than bid up the prices, the incumbent operators sat on their hands and, when no other bids were entered, the existing operators got fair shares of the spectrum at the set prices worked out by the Singapore regulator, the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA).
Which is all very nice, but it means that no new challenger network will operate in Singapore for the foreseeable future.
The IDA says the three Singapore telcos were allocated the blocks of airwaves they bid for based on their initial offers. A total of 270 MHz of spectrum in the 1800 MHz and 2.5 GHz spectrum bands was put up for sale. In the event (or non-event) M1 won 80 MHz of spectrum for S$104 million; SingTel won 100 MHz of spectrum at S$136 million; and StarHub got 90 MHz of spectrum at S$120 million.
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