CAT hopes for future deals with concession holders

The state agency’s new chief |executive officer Kitisak Sriprasert said one option would be to have CAT convert its assets into equities, and added that this idea had already been floated with the three concession holders. He added that a future network partnership would also help them save on the cost of the new network rollout.
Kitisak explained that CAT was interested in a long-term partnership, especially if one of the partners were able to clinch a 2.1GHz spectrum licence from the National Broadcasting and Telecommunica-tions Commission (NBTC).
CAT currently owns the concessions of TrueMove, Digital Phone Co (DPC) and Total Access Communi-cation (DTAC). The concessions held by TrueMove and DPC will expire next September, while that of DTAC ends in 2018.
Meanwhile, Kitisak, who took over as CEO on March 21, said he did not agree with TrueMove’s proposal that it purchase the cellular network from CAT once the concession ends. He explained that if CAT were to sell its assets to concession holders, then it would have nothing left. Instead, he said, it would be better to jointly utilise the networks and generate new revenue sources.
CAT is currently caught in a dispute with DTAC and TrueMove on which parts of the network assets they should transfer back. Kitisak said he might have to take some of these issues to court.

3G SCHEMES
As for problems related to the 3G partnership deals between CAT and True Corp, he said the agency would find ways to remedy the situation in 15 days.
The Information and Communications Technology Ministry has already written to CAT asking it to fix things, especially after the ministry’s panel found five alleged irregularities in the process of making the deals.
The irregularities include the |fact that the deal was planned in advance so it could pave the way for True Corp to take over Hutchison Telecoms’ network in Thailand, which then opened the door for a CAT-True 3G partnership later. CAT also appeared to bypass several state procedures and regulations to finalise these deals with True.
Kitisak said his greatest concern right now was whether these deals had violated the 2010 Frequency Allocation Law. NBTC, which has the jurisdiction to rule on this aspect, has already set up a subcommittee to examine the case.
Article 46 (2) of the law obliges NBTC licence holders to manage their spectrum rights on their own. They are prohibited from allowing other parties to do the job on their behalf.
Meanwhile, the National Anti-Corruption Commission’s subcommittee will decide on April 23 if the deals had breached any laws or regulations. Its scrutiny will focus on whether the deals complied with the 1992 Public-Private Joint Venture Act.
CAT and True’s subsidiaries, Real Move and Real Future, signed 3G-partnership deals last January. Under these deals, CAT procured 3G-network equipment from Real Future’s subsidiary BFKT (Thailand) in order to sell its 3G bandwidth. The state agency also allocated part of the bandwidth for resale under its “My” brand.
Kitisak said CAT would also ask the National Economic and Social Development Board and the Finance Ministry if it could spend Bt7.84 billion on enhancing My service’s operation. Of the total budget, Bt300 million would be used for procuring a real-time billing system for the service so it can launch a prepaid call service. CAT hopes to procure this billing system on April 24.
At present, My service only offers post-paid services and it currently has 15,000 subscribers. Kitisak said CAT had revised down its customer target for this year to 500,000 from 600,000.
CAT has also temporarily suspended its plan to spend Bt12 billion on expanding its telecom infrastructure to support the 3G services offered under the deals, pending remedial measures.