Don't Let the Entire Populace Become Victims of the Prisoner's Dilemma in the 5G Bidding War

Don't Let the Entire Populace Become Victims of the Prisoner's Dilemma in the 5G Bidding War

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

January 20, 2020

 Translation of an Excerpt

The bidding for the tender of the first stage spectrum for this country’s fifth-generation mobile communications (5G) has ended, writing the history of a different kind of “pride of Taiwan”, because the winners will pay NT$138 billion, setting a new record for Taiwan’s spectrum bidding. Among all the countries in the world that have already issued tenders for 5G at the present time, Taiwan has surpassed South Korea, Germany and Italy, ranking first in the world.

The government set the base price for 5G at NT$30 billion; the national coffers and the Legislative Yuan set the revenue for 5G tender at NT$40 billion and NT$44 billion, respectively. However, the winners surprisingly exceeded the government's target to the tune of over NT$100 billion. Such a large gap, on the one hand, underscored the government's miss with respect to the budget and assessment of the industry prior to the tender, and on the other, it showed the imperfect design of the bidding system, releasing inadequate bandwidth, putting the bidders in a "prisoner's dilemma".

The bidding system made the winning bids skyrocket; the national coffers thus received NT$100 billion in extra revenue, the greatest beneficiary being the government. Amid the cacophony of doubts and questions, the Cabinet indicated that it would make good use of the 5G tender funds, employing the surplus tender money in three major directions: users’ fees, infrastructure construction, and services. However, from the past performance of the Tsai government, this God-sent gift will not necessarily be used to benefit telecommunications users, but be employed as the little coffers of the government.

With regard to the done deals of exorbitant 5G tender money, we urge the Legislative Yuan to strictly guard the gates, ensuring that the excess revenue in 5G tender money be correctly used in the three arenas: users’ fees, infrastructure construction, and services, as declared by the Cabinet. On the one hand, we cannot allow 5G users’ fees to get out of control; secondly, we should provide timely support for the development of 5G-related application industries. Thirdly, we must at the same time take into account the gap between urban and rural telecommunications construction. These remedial measures must be initiated immediately and receive stringent supervision, never, ever allowing the entire population to become victims of the prisoner's dilemma in the 5G bidding war.

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