NBTC approves five-year telecom plan
Preparations for granting 3G spectrum licences took a step forward yesterday when the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) approved the draft of the 2012-2016 telecom master plan, NBTC spokesperson Supinya Klangnarong said.
This follows the commission’s recent approvals of the drafts of the spectrum-management master plan, the broadcasting master plan and the Universal Service Obligation master plan. The plans are key elements in the process that will enable the NBTC to auction new spectrum licences, such as the 3G licences.
The draft telecom master plan also highlights the NBTC’s goal of achieving coverage of 95 per cent of the population for voice services and 85-per-cent coverage for data services within the next five years.
The NBTC is set to hold a public hearing on the master plans early next year and to put them into effect within the first quarter.
The watchdog intends to auction the 3G-2.1GHz licences within the third quarter of next year.
The NBTC board also approved a proposal from its telecom committee to set up a 16-member telecom sub-committee to prepare the plan to auction the 3G-2.1GHz spectrum licences.
The sub-committee will comprise five members of the NBTC telecom committee, along with experts from many fields, including Deunden Nikomborirak, research director of the Thailand Development Research Institute’s Sectoral Economics Programme, and Kittisak Prokati, a lecturer at Thammasat University’s Law Faculty.
In a related matter, Sujira Enterprise, which airs a radio programme on the 98.5 MHz spectrum granted to it by the NBTC’s 1 Por Nor Radio Station, has informed the NBTC that it will discontinue the programme at the end of this year in line with a recent civil court order.
The NBTC Office brought the case before the civil court after the company declined to pay the airtime rental fee to the office for a certain period.
