CAT stance on NBTC infrastructure-sharing draft casts cloud over 2.1GHz auction
CAT Telecom strongly opposes the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission's draft regulation on infrastructure-sharing, which forms part of the watchdog's overall plan to auction the 2.1-gigahertz spectrum.
The state agency will today ask the NBTC to revise the part of the draft that could affect its planned network rental business, according to CAT chief executive officer Kitisak Sriprasert.
A CAT source said that if the NBTC declined to amend the draft, it might file a legal challenge against it, which could prejudice the watchdog’s plan to auction the 2.1GHz spectrum in October.
The draft allows NBTC licence holders and private telecom concession holders to conduct network infrastructure-sharing. It is aimed at promoting infrastructure-sharing between incumbent operators and future licence holders for third-generation cellular service to enable the latter to meet the NBTC’s requirements concerning 3G network roll-out.
The requirements state that winners of at least 10-megahertz bandwidth in the NBTC spectrum auction have to roll out sufficient network to cover 50 per cent of the population within two years of obtaining licences, rising to 80 per cent within the following two years.
CAT wants the NBTC to specify in the draft that its private cellular concession holders that want to rent out to others network assets that they have yet to transfer to CAT, or which are still the subject of arbitration disputes over network ownership, first have to request CAT’s consent to do so before sharing network-rental revenue with the state agency.
CAT has already wooed its concessionaires about being part of its plan to rent out these network assets.
CAT plans to finalise establishment of a so-called Tower Co in October by the end of the year to rent out its existing telecom network assets, including those to be transferred to it by concession holders after their concessions end, in order to generate a new revenue source.
The agency is still engaged in network-ownership dis-|putes at arbitration panels with some of its concession holders. The concessions were granted on a build-transfer-operate basis.
The CAT concession terms of TrueMove and Digital Phone Co end in September next year, while that of Total Access Communication (DTAC) expires in 2018.
However, DPC has so far transferred only 180 base stations nationwide to CAT out of its total of 2,000, while DTAC has transferred just 1,100 out of 12,000.
TrueMove has yet to transfer any of its 8,000 base stations.
