The Winners of Thailand's Digital-TV licenses | Image: NBTC

Thailand’s National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission today began its two-day auction for 24 Digital-TV licenses. First up on the table was seven high-definition (HD) variety channels and seven standard (SD) variety channels.

The starting price of the HD variety channel license was set at 1,510 million Thai Baht per license (1.00 THB = 0.0304528 USD). Nine bidders entered the auctions for the seven HD Variety Digital-TV licenses with BEC-Multimedia providing the highest bid at 3.53 billion Thai Baht.

Winners of the HD variety channel licenses

• BEC-Multimedia (Bid: 3.53 billion THB)
• Bangkok Media and Broadcasting (Bid: 3.46 billion THB)
• Bangkok Broadcasting and Television (Bid: 3.37 billion THB)
• Triple V Broadcast (Bid: 3.36 billion THB)
• MCOT (Bid: 3.34 billion THB)
• Amarin Television (Bid: 3.32 billion THB)
• GMM HD Digital TV (Bid: 3.32 billion THB)

PM Group and Thai Broadcasting (Workpoint) which bid at 3.31 and 3.0 billion respectively did not win a license in the HD Variety channel auction.

NBTC’s auction committee will endorse the result on January 6 2014 and then propose it to the NBTC board for final endorsement on January 15 2014. The auction price for the HD Variety channels was according to NBTC above its target, which was set at 2.5-3 billion baht.

Winners of the SD Variety channel licenses

• Thai Broadcasting Workpoint (Bid 2355 million THB)
• True DTT (Bid 2355 million THB)
• GMM SD Digital TV (Bid 2355 million THB)
• BEC Multimedia CH3 (Bid 2355 million THB)
• RS Television (Bid 2355 million THB)
• Mono Broadcast (Bid 2355 million THB)
• BangkokBiz Nation Group (Bid 2355 million THB)

Winners of the News channel category and their bids.

• NBC Next Vision Nation Group (Bid 1,338 million THB)
• Voice TV (Bid 1330 million THB)
• Thai TV (Bid 1328 million THB)
• Springnews Television (Bid 1318 million THB)
• Thai News Network (Bid 1316 million THB)
• DN Broadcast (Bid 1310 million THB)
• 3A Marketing (Bid 1298 million THB)

Winners of the Children's channel category.

• BEC Multimedia (Bid 666 million THB)
• MCOT Plc (Bid 660 million THB)

NBTC expects the digital TV license holders will be able to broadcast content in early February, in line with the condition that the winners must start airing within 30 days of the announcement of the winning bids. The top bid winners in each category are allowed to choose channel number and network provider.

At least 60% of the 22 million Thai households should be able to watch digital channels from the first day of broadcast.