Colombia’s Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications (Ministerio de Tecnologias de la Informacion y las Comunicaciones, MinTIC) has announced that it has verified four would-be bidders ahead of its planned multi-band spectrum auction. The registered bidders are as follows: Claro Colombia; Partners Telecom Colombia (WOM); the network-sharing JV between Tigo and Telefonica; and Sociedad Futura Telecall Colombia. The auction will comprise spectrum in the 700MHz, 1900MHz, Extended AWS, 2500MHz and 3500MHz bands. The participants will be rubberstamped on 4 December and the auction is earmarked to commence on 20 December.

According to unconfirmed press reports, Sociedad Futura Telecall Colombia is an affiliate of Rio de Janeiro-based B2B operator Telexperts Telecomunicacoes (Telecall). The Brazilian Telecall, which operates fibre-optic backbone networks in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, launched MVNO services in 2019 and went on to deploy an MVNA platform, which has supported the launches of more than 30 virtual operators.