Only court can alter 3G deals with CAT, says True

But True welcomes bilateral talks with CAT to seek a way out of the problems related to the deals.

True has asserted that the contracts are legal.

Adhiruth Thothaveesansuk, managing director for mobile business of True Corp, said the CAT-True contracts were partnership agreements. If anyone wants to change them, it can only be done by way of a court decision.

"We’ve operated the service under the partnership with CAT. By principle, the contractual parties have to collaborate to provide the service. If one of the contractual parties has done anything that obstructs the service provisioning, this might be regarded as breaching the contract, which could hurt both parties. Now we’re continuing the business as usual and more customers are still signing up with us," Adhiruth said.

The service is operated by Real Move under the TrueMove H brand.

CAT and True are in talks to seek a resolution to these problems, so both sides have to wait for the result, which is expected soon, he said.

According to CAT, one of its proposals is to buy back the third-generation cellular networks from BFKT.

Last week the Information and Communications Technology Minis-try asked CAT to suspend any activities related to the 3G service under the True Corp partnership, pending the completion of the probe of the deals by authorities. CAT and True’s subsidiaries Real Move and Real Future signed the deals in January last year.

Real Move has yet to receive any order from CAT to suspend the service, Adhiruth said.

Real Move has 1.7 million customers. It aims to have 13,500 3G base stations set up this year. It has installed 5,500 already, which should increase to 7,000 next month.

He said TrueMove had also informed CAT that it would discontinue the 3G service trial and would have its 3G customers roam with Real Move afterwards. Both Real Move and TrueMove are True’s cellular flagships.

Under the deals signed early last year, CAT, Real Future and Real Move were to collaborate to provide the 3G service on the 850-megahertz spectrum. CAT has procured 3G-HSPA (high-speed packet access) equipment from Real Future’s BFKT (Thailand) to generate 3G bandwidth capacity for wholesale and resale. CAT has agreed to use its 850MHz spectrum only with BFKT HSPA equipment. CAT has also wholesaled 3G bandwidth to Real Move.

The deals have attracted scrutiny by authorities over their legality.

The Senate anti-corruption committee was the first to conclude this February that parts of the deals might violate the law. It found that CAT’s agreement to allow BFKT (Thailand) to procure telecom towers and signal systems on its behalf to generate 3G bandwidth, and CAT’s apparent granting of authority to BFKT to manage the 850MHz spectrum on its behalf, might contravene Article 46 (2) of the frequency law.

The committee also took the view that BFKT, which is part of the True Group, breached Article 45 of the Frequency Allocation Law as it does not have a business licence to provide this network rental service. The committee had sent its report to the National Anti-Corruption Commis-sion (NACC).

In March, the ICT Ministry’s committee tasked with probing the deals’ legality came up with five irregularities in the ways the deals were made. It also sent its findings to the NACC for further investigation. The NACC committee that also separately probed the case on its own concluded this month that some state officials involved in the deals had been negligent.