True chief upbeat on firm's 3G business

  Once all related problems are dealt with, True will focus on the plan to bid for a 2.1GHz-3G spectrum licence from the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC). He said the company is ready to support CAT in revising the contracts. “From our discussion with CAT chief executive officer [Kitisak Sriprasert], we understand each other. All doubts about the contracts will be gone once the revision is complete,” Suphachai said.
The NBTC’s telecom committee is expected to order its licence holder CAT to revise the contracts with True soon to make them fully compliant with Article 46 (2) of the 2010 Frequency Allocation Law. That article prohibits NBTC licence-holders from allowing third parties to take control of their spectrum management.
An NBTC subcommittee scrutinising the legality of the CAT-True 3G service partnership deals concluded that in practice, CAT appeared not to have complete management control of its 800-megahertz spectrum being used under the partnership to provide wholesale-resale 3G service. CAT is waiting for the official order from the NBTC telecom committee to revise the contracts. The state agency has to report the progress of the contract revision to it within 30 days of the order.
The NBTC telecom committee last week said the contract revision would not affect 3G customers under the CAT-True partnership. True’s subsidiary Real Move, which has provided the TrueMove H brand 3G service under the deals, has more than 1.7 million customers.
Suphachai added that in the next step, True would move ahead to resolve other related problems with CAT, including the overdue network interconnection fee payment and the overdue mobile phone number fee payment that CAT has to pay to the other networks and to the NBTC, respectively. CAT has declined to pay the fees since April for its own and for Real Move’s 3G service. The state agency cited the need to submit the investment plan related to the deals for Cabinet consideration first, in line with the recommendation of the National Economic and Social Development Board.
Suphachai added that he welcomed the ongoing talks with CAT on the state agency’s plan to buy the High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) network equipment that BFKT (Thailand) has rented to CAT to generate 3G bandwidth under the partnership. BFKT is a subsidiary of True’s Real Future. Both True and CAT are in talks on the matter as part of CAT’s attempt to take control of the network and become a full telecom network provider.
“We’ve welcomed the talks on whether CAT wants to buy all or just part of the network equipment. We want to maintain our partnership with CAT,” Suphachai said.
But Suphachai is doubtful that CAT’s renting the HSPA network equipment from BFKT could be deemed as violating the telecom law.
Last week, the NBTC telecom committee ordered its officials to probe whether BFKT’s leasing the network under the CAT-True 3G partnership breaches the Telecom Business Act’s prohibition against operating without a licence. The officials will report the results to the committee within the next 30 days.
He said that True already had its legal team examine the case. Since the rental of the BFKT network started under the partnership last January, there is no regulation requiring BFKT to obtain an operating licence. But BFKT is willing to remedy the situation, pending the final probe conclusion and the telecom committee’s order. The NBTC will draw up the regulations to issue the network facilitator licence, which is specifically for companies without a spectrum licence to lease networks to other firms.