To Buy or Not To Buy: the value of AWS spectrum in Paraguay

Plum carried out an exercise for Telecom Argentina looking at the value of spectrum in various bands for their operations in Paraguay.  This project was designed to inform Telecom Argentina of the relative value of spectrum, and to influence their future strategy around participation in spectrum auctions and other spectrum acquisition.  Plum presented the outputs of different modelling techniques to the executive board of Núcelo Paraguay, and guided the board’s interpretation of the results.

The project was carried out in a short timeframe, involving close collaboration with staff from both Telecom Argentina and Núcelo Paraguay.  Plum guided Núcelo Paraguay through the valuation options available, and, due to time constraints and availability of competitors’ data, the optimum valuation techniques were chosen to be an avoided cost model, with sanity checks provided through international benchmarking and cross-checks on financial data.  An avoided cost model was built, configured and calibrated for each spectrum ownership scenario, with final results presenting the value of each spectrum band on a cumulative basis.

Plum also discussed with Núcelo Paraguay how further analysis could be undertaken to look at the quality of service, demand for data traffic, and introduction of new technology.