The Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) Thursday auctioned the country's first-ever direct to home (DTH) licences for Rs 14.69 billion. The bidding process started here the other day after the Supreme Court (SC) of Pakistan conditionally allowed the PEMRA to go ahead with the plan of bidding DTH licences, for which the Authority had short-listed 12 companies out of 16. The auction started late Wednesday night and concluded on Thursday morning after a span of 15 hours.
The companies gave their bids in sealed letters in the first round, while open bidding took place in the second round. The highest bid for the DTH licence was offered by M/s Mag Entertainment with Rs 4.91 billion, followed by M/s Shahzad Sky (Pvt) Limited Islamabad with Rs 4.90 billion, whereas M/s Star Times Communications Pakistan Private Limited Islamabad, placed the third highest bid of Rs 4.89 billion.
The PEMRA set base price for each DTH licence at Rs 200 million and was expecting to touch Rs 2 billion mark, but no one in the authority had imagined such an extraordinary response, an official told this newspaper when asked about the outcome. The licences will be issued to the companies after receiving the security clearance from the ministry of interior and security agencies. Chairman PEMRA Absar Alam congratulated the winning companies and called it a "game changer" for Pakistan's electronic media industry.
"To date, this is the biggest investment in Pakistan's electronic media history," he said.
Alam told media persons that the whole auction process was done transparently, adding it would create more job opportunities in media industry. The DTH is a digital box that provides channels permitted to be aired in the country to customers without any cable connection. The authority is expecting $150 million direct and $250 million indirect investment in the country's media industry, which will create at least 16,000 direct and indirect jobs.
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