THE price war on mobile data plans that has broken out among telco service providers was expected once fibre broadband services provider MyRepublic announced its intention to become the fourth telco in Singapore, offering super cheap data plans.

What is surprising, however, is that this price war has started so early in the game. According to the timetable set out by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), bidding for new spectrum will take place in the third quarter of this year. During this exercise, 60 MHz of spectrum will be set aside for a new telco operator at a reserve price. Assuming that MyRepublic is the only company to come forward for the spectrum, it will pay the pre-set price of S$35 million. If in the unlikely event that there are more companies that show interest, there will be an auction and the highest bidder will get the right to become Singapore's fourth telco.

Once this spectrum is allocated, MyRepublic, or any other company, will have to start operations by April 2017 and achieve islandwide coverage by September 2018. This means that the effective competition from a fourth telco operator would kick in only by the second quarter of next year, even if the new operator starts to take pre-bookings.