Injunction holding up 4G auction, says Paraguay watchdog

An injunction filed by Paraguayan telecoms operator Personal continues to block telecoms regulator Conatel's plans to auction 4G spectrum and is holding back development of telecoms services in the country, local daily ABC reported Conatel technical manager Diego Miranda as saying.

"One of the operators went to the courts and the auction stopped there. The project died," Miranda said.

Conatel was due to auction 4G spectrum last October and collect US$100mn in license fees. The 1700-2100MHz (AWS), 2600MHz and 700MHz bands were all being considered.

However, Personal, which goes under the Nucleo brand, demanded that market leader Tigo, a unit of Millicom, be prevented from participating considering that it already holds 50MHz in the 2600MHz band as a result of the acquisition of cable TV operator Cablevisión in 2012 and must use that spectrum before planning on bidding for more.

Tigo has argued that it will not use its 2,600MHz frequencies to launch 4G, citing the higher costs of infrastructure rollout as the key reason.

Personal has also asked for Vox, the mobile unit of state telco Copaco, to be excluded from the auction given that it already has 40MHz in the 1900MHz band and is already offering LTE services.

According to BMI research, at the end of 2014, Tigo had a market share of 52.6%, Personal 33.1%, Claro 7.6%, and Vox 6.8%.