CAT board to consider today
The CAT Telecom board will today consider its options on revising its contracts with True Corp on their partnership to provide third-generation cellular service, to make them comply with the Frequency Allocation Law.
The state agency might decide to revise six problem items in the contracts identified by the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC), or it could opt to scrap the contracts and draft new ones.
A CAT source said the board was likely to prefer to create new contracts and submit them for Cabinet approval.
The revisions became necessary after the NBTC telecom committee approved the conclusions of its subcommittee probing the legality of the contracts that CAT had to make them fully comply with Article 46 (2) of the 2010 Frequency Allocation Law. According to its probe, CAT appears not to have complete management control over its own 850-megahertz spectrum used under the partnership.
The frequency law prohibits NBTC licence holders such as CAT and TOT from allowing third parties to control their spectrum management.
CAT and True’s two subsidiaries, Real Future and Real Move, signed deals in January last year to forge the partnership to provide 3G-850MHz service. Under the deals, BFKT (Thailand) of Real Future has leased the 3G network equipment to CAT for 3G bandwidth wholesale and resale. CAT has granted wholesale the 3G bandwidth to Real Move to provide service.
The CAT board will also discuss another problem with the 3G plan. BFKT installed 5,000 3G base stations for the network but allegedly failed to comply with the NBTC regulations requiring any cellular operator to hold a public hearing with communities in the area in which it plans to install network infrastructure before it does so.
However, a source from True said the company had held the hearing in line with NBTC regulations.
