CAT in talks on 3G retail
CAT Telecom is in talks with four prospective partners about retailing 3G broadband cellular service.
Viroj Tocharoenvanith, acting CEO, said yesterday that the interested parties are Loxley, Samart Corp, IEC and FTTX, a subsidiary of AirAsia.
CAT is wholesaling 3G capacity to Real Move, which is a subsidiary of True Corp. Real Move is retailing the 3G service under the TrueMove H brand.
Besides wholesaling, CAT is retailing its 3G bandwidth capacity under the My brand, mainly to corporate users.
Yesterday, CAT formally splashed out its My post-paid 3G service in 76 provinces, with the goal of acquiring 600,000 subscribers this year, up from about 2,000 currently.
Of the total target, 300,000 will be migrated from CAT’s existing Code Division Multiple Access cellular network in 51 provinces. CAT will switch off the CDMA network in the middle of this year to focus on the new 3G service.
CAT is spending Bt50 million this year on the marketing campaign for My, which is running on more than 4,000 base stations. The network will be expanded to 5,000 stations next month, 8,000 in March and 14,000 in December.
CAT is searching for a new CEO, but reportedly only Kittisak Sriprasert, its former senior executive vice president, has applied. The board is expected to consider how to proceed with only one candidate for the top job.
