Thailand has just completed its joke of a 3G auction, but even now the country’s long-suffering populace may have to wait months for high-speed mobile services to be implemented, a scandalous FOURTEEN years after the service was first introduced in Japan.

Yesterday’s auction of nine 3G licenses saw Thailand raise a total of $1.4 billion, snapped up by local telecommunications firms Advanced Info Services (AIS), Total Access Communication (TAC) and True Corp.  This might seem like a lot, but the amount spent was far below the licenses’ assessed value according to Thailand’s National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC), which carried out the auction.

Still, Suthiphol Thaweechaikarn, commissioner of the NBTC, insisted that there was no evidence of collusion among the bidders for the licenses, even though five of them were sold at the minimum bidding price.

“Our process is transparent and in line with the law. If someone will sue us for setting a low price, we can explain that,” claimed Thaweechaikarn.

Thailand’s 3G auction, first touted in 2005, has been beset by delays thanks to a combination of political turmoil and business disputes between telecommunications firms that had to be settled in lengthy court battles.

Previous efforts to hold the auction were blocked when state telecommunications firm CAT Telecom requested (and received) a delay after arguing that the country’s previous regulator, the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), didn’t have the authority to sell the licenses – the suspension on bidding was only lifted this year after lawmakers established a new governing body (the NTBC) with explicit powers to do so, leading to CAT’s refusal to join the bidding process.

In the meantime, neighboring countries such as Cambodia, Laos and Malaysia have all long since established their own 3G networks, leaving Thailand as something of a laughing stock in the region. Indeed, many Asian countries are now looking to introduce 4G technology.

But even now, Thailand may not get its 3G network. Given the ‘mysteriously’ low bids on the licenses, certain government officials are calling for the NTC to delay endorsing the results of the auction, so that the regulator can investigate allegations of collusion. Given the previous protracted legal battles, any challenge to the result is likely to delay 3G adoption by months, if not years.

“Each operator ends up paying less than 1bn baht a year for the licenses, which is very cheap,” said Somkiat Tangkitvanich of the Thailand Development Research Institute.

“It will not benefit consumers. It will only help the operators’ bottom line.”

And in the meantime, consumers will likely have to wait, and wait, wait…