CAT to take network dispute to court

CAT chief executive officer Kitisak Sriprasert said on Wednesday that the state agency would withdraw the current case involving 700 DTAC cellular base stations from the arbitration panel, and then forward it to the court.

The CAT board has acknowledged the plan.

CAT considers that once the arbitration panel reached a decision on the dispute, one of the two parties would be likely to bring the case to court if it was dissatisfied with the outcome.

Therefore, it is better to withdraw the case from the panel, bring it before the court and get a final ruling on the matter as quickly as possible, the CEO said.

He said DTAC had agreed to CAT’s plan.

DTAC chief executive officer Jon Eddy Abdullah said the company would be looking for the court to rule based on the concession contract with CAT, which it believed was clear.

According to an official CAT document, DTAC has 7,019 cellular base stations, of which 5,942 have yet to be transferred to the state agency under the build-transfer-operate basis.

Kitisak said that once the court made a final ruling on the dispute over 700 base stations, it would set the precedent for CAT’s next move in claiming the remaining DTAC |stations.

CAT is engaged in arbitration disputes over network asset ownership with its three cellular concession holders: DTAC, Digital Phone Co (DPC) and TrueMove.

The state agency wants to end the disputes as soon as possible as part of its plan to rent out its existing network, including those to be transferred to it by its three concession holders after their concessions end, in order to generate a new revenue source.

CAT is also engaged in many other legal disputes with its cellular concession holders and is seeking ways to resolve the problems, Kitisak said.

There was discussion at CAT’s board meeting this week that in the worst case, it might have to terminate the concessions if these legal problems cannot be resolved. However, CAT at this stage still sees no need to consider this option, he added.

In a related matter, CAT will today talk with the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission again on whether the watchdog can revise its draft infrastructure-sharing regulations.

CAT wants the NBTC to specify in the draft regulations that its private cellular concession holders wanting 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.

Kitisak said CAT would prefer not to bring the issue to court if the NBTC refused to revise the draft, and would seek a compromise solution instead.

Information and Communications Technology Minister Anudith Nakornthap said he was waiting for CAT and the NBTC to resolve the problem.

However, the ministry would step in if they failed to do so.