Summary

  • ECTEL proposes removing a minimum annual spectrum fee and charging differently for different bands, partly to encourage future network development.
  • Smaller markets and larger ones would not necessarily pay the same. Better or cheaper service for households is a hoped-for outcome, not an established result.

There are two bills in ECTEL's spectrum debate. An operator pays one for the right to use radio frequencies. A household pays the other to get online. ECTEL can propose changing the first. Whether that makes the second easier to bear is a much longer story.

The households have already supplied a reason to care. Slow browsing topped the list of broadband problems they reported in every one of ECTEL's five member countries. Paying for mobile data was another concern. In four countries, fewer than half of households considered it affordable; St Kitts and Nevis was the exception, at 56%.

These are findings from ECTEL's 2024 household survey, not a current speed test. The browsing question covered both fixed and mobile broadband. It tells us what people found frustrating, not which part of a network was responsible. Nor does it establish that the same households struggled with both speed and cost.

That distinction matters to anyone hoping for relief. More capacity might improve a connection without making a data plan cheaper. A lower price would be welcome without proving that browsing had improved. A useful outcome would have to be judged in households' terms, not just by how much less an operator paid a regulator.

ECTEL's new fee proposal starts several steps before either result. Its concern is that useful airwaves may go unused. It warns that today's uniform price could leave much of the upper mid-band spectrum without takers, holding back network development and service quality. A lower charge is meant to encourage future assignments, including for 5G. Operators would still have to turn those rights into a service people could use.

The survey does not blame spectrum fees for slow browsing, and the proposal cannot promise to fix it. But it opens a practical question: is the annual bill encouraging operators to put the airwaves to work, or making some frequencies unattractive before that work can begin?

The same bill, a very different market

At present, a mobile-spectrum licensee owes at least 300,000 Eastern Caribbean dollars a year. A small frequency holding can produce a smaller calculation, but not a smaller bill. ECTEL would remove that floor. The schedule was last reviewed in 2006, with piecemeal changes since.

Market size makes the next choice awkward. The paper compares the same holding in two countries: paired blocks of 15 MHz, costing 300,000 XCD a year in each. St Kitts and Nevis had 46,843 residents in 2024; Saint Lucia had 179,744. The fee is identical, but the populations from which customers might come are very different.

Expressed per MHz per resident, that is roughly 0.21 XCD versus 0.06. Nobody is sending residents that invoice. It is a way to compare markets, not a count of paying subscribers. The comparison explains why an equal fee need not present operators with an equal business proposition.

The consultation form asks which sort of equality should prevail. One option applies the same population-based rate in each country: fewer residents, less cash per MHz. The other splits the regional amount into five equal shares: the same cash charge per MHz, regardless of market size. Both cannot deliver the same result.

ECTEL advises these countries plus Dominica, Grenada and St Vincent and the Grenadines. National NTRCs administer licences and frequency authorisations. Spectrum users pay the fees that support regulation; this is not a debt being divided among governments.

Not a general discount

Removing the floor is only one change. The proposed annual rates would distinguish between bands:

Band XCD per MHz per person
Below 1 GHz 0.14
Lower mid-band 0.10
Upper mid-band 0.03

Today's charge is 20,000 XCD per paired MHz per state, subject to the minimum. The paper's 0.10 comparison figure converts that into a population-weighted equivalent; it is not today's uniform per-person tariff. Fixed wireless access in bands suitable for mobile services would also move from the fixed-link schedule to the mobile-spectrum, or IMT, schedule.

There is a catch for anyone expecting a simple chain from lower fees to lower phone bills. ECTEL estimates total IMT fees rising from 3.0% to just under 4.0% of 2024 industry revenue, against the international 7–8% it cites. Some rights would become more attractive to acquire; the overall charge would not simply shrink.

Nor is this just an administrative-cost calculation. The proposal values spectrum rights using international licences, a 12% capital-cost assumption, currency and inflation adjustments, and the removal of extreme outliers. ECTEL's own costs and revenues are unpublished, according to the paper.

Initial comments closed on 16 October; replies run from 26 October to 6 November. ECTEL Directorate would revise the proposal for Council of Ministers consideration and a recommendation for national adoption. It is not yet the new fee schedule.

An operator might eventually look at its revised spectrum bill and see a reason to invest. A customer would have no reason to celebrate that document alone. The household test is still the one the survey brought into view: a connection that is less frustrating to use, and mobile data that feels affordable. Neither benefit has been demonstrated by this consultation.

Correction and update, 21 October 2026: Clarified who pays, the current population-equivalent measure and the revenue comparison; limited the unpublished-accounts statement to ECTEL. Added dated household-survey context without attributing its findings to spectrum fees. Original URL, publication date and access unchanged.