Competitive licensing processes are generally used to issue an individual licence to a single service provider or a limited number of them. In a competitive licensing process, the regulator (or other licensing authority) typically describes the business opportunity and invites interested parties to submit applications for the licence to enter the business. The successful applicant is normally selected through a form of competitive evaluation, such as a comparative evaluation process (sometimes called a “beauty contest”), an auction, or some combination of the two.
A competition for the award of an individual licence is frequently referred to as a “licensing” or “tender” process or a “request for applications” process. In this module, we use the term “competitive licensing process” to refer generally to a competitive selection process, by which a number of applicants compete for the right to hold a limited number of licences.