NBTC to mull draft master plans today

NBTC secretary-general Takorn Tantasit said yesterday that the regulator’s board was scheduled to consider the revised drafts of the spectrum-management, telecom and broadcasting master plans today. The board had also been expected to approve them today and have them published in the Royal Gazette at the end of this month. The drafts were put to public hearings recently.

The NBTC needs the master plans to take effect as soon as possible to enable it to move forward to auction licences for the 2.1-gigahertz spectrum in the third quarter.

Its telecom and broadcasting committees have approved the draft plans affecting their sectors, while the NBTC office has been circulating the revised draft on the spectrum plan to all 11 commissioners to consider before today’s expected approval. 

However, an NBTC source said some commissioners had yet to receive a copy of the spectrum-plan draft, so they might not be in a hurry to approve it today. They might ask for a special board meeting to consider the draft.

The source added that if the board did not approve the spectrum plan today, it might also decline to approve the telecom and broadcasting plans, opting to deal with the spectrum plan first. 

Ericsson Thailand, a major supplier of telecom-network equipment, said it was hopeful that the auction of the 2.1GHz spectrum licences would take place in the third quarter as intended by the NBTC. If it does, the market will see a massive roll-out of third-generation cellular networks by the licence winners early next year, company president Joacim Damgard said yesterday.

In a separate matter, the NBTC board today will also consider appointing an internal audit committee, in line with the 2010 Frequency Allocation Law. The committee will comprise five members who are outsiders, such as a former official of the Office of the Auditor-General. The committee will focus on examining the spending of the NBTC office and commissioners. 

Meanwhile, commissioner Prawit Leesatapornwongsa said he would push for the telecom committee to seek ways to reduce the service fee of transferring mobile-phone numbers from the present Bt99.

He said Clearinghouse Co, which facilitates the number transfers, made profit of about Bt6 million in the past year from providing the service to about 300,000 mobile-phone users.