CAT risks fines, suspension if too slow revising True 3G deals

A committee of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) has also extended the deadline by one more month from last month to complete its inquiry into whether BFKT (Thailand)’s operation under this 3G partnership breached Article 7 of the Telecom Business Act.
Takorn Tantasit, secretary-general of the NBTC, said yesterday that CAT was formally warned in writing last Friday about its delay in amending the contracts to comply with the Frequency Allocation Law. It also demanded that the state enterprise produce the revised contracts within 15 days after receiving the warning.
CAT still has a chance to inform the watchdog about any difficulties in meeting this 15-day deadline, but if it does not show any progress, it may face punitive measures starting with a daily fine of Bt20,000, going up to a temporary revocation of its licence.
CAT chief executive officer Kitisak Sriprasert said he believed his agency could finish the contract revision before the end of this month.
In late July, CAT said it would tell the regulator that it needed another month for further talks with True on the joint contract amendment, but Takorn said his office had not received any formal request for more time.
The NBTC’s telecom committee issued an order on June 20 for CAT to join True in rewriting the contracts and gave CAT until July 27 to report on the progress.
This followed the ruling by the NBTC’s telecom committee in June that CAT had to make the contracts comply fully with Article 46 (2) of the Frequency Allocation Law. Its probe found that CAT appeared not to possess complete management control over its 850-megahertz spectrum used for the partnership. The article prohibits NBTC licence holders such as CAT and TOT from allowing third parties to take control of their frequencies.
CAT and True have still been talking on the joint contract revision. CAT could opt to fix the six problem items in the contracts identified by the NBTC, or it could choose to scrap the contracts altogether and draw up new ones for True.
CAT and True’s subsidiaries Real Future and Real Move signed the deals in January 2011 to forge a partnership to provide a third-generation cellular service on the 850MHz spectrum. BFKT (Thailand) of Real Future has leased 3G equipment to CAT for 3G bandwidth, wholesale and resale. CAT has offered the 3G bandwidth to Real Move to provide the service.
The deals have provoked criticism and a series of probes by state authorities over their doubtful legality.
The NBTC’s telecom committee also assigned another panel to look into whether BFKT’s operation under the 3G partnership breaches Article 7 of the Telecom Business Act. The article says those operating a telecom business must have NBTC licences, otherwise they may be subject to a fine or imprisonment under Article 67 of the telecom law.
In a separate case involving the alleged use of fake documents to seek import permits for a combined 280 mobile-phone models, the NBTC will file police complaints against the 12 companies out of a total of 27 that have yet to respond to a request for clarification.
The other 15 have provided their explana-tions but the watchdog is still examining them and will ask for more documents.
The NBTC ordered these 27 companies to make a clarification within 30 days from June 30.
Companies that want to import mobile devices need a permit from the NBTC. To obtain this, they must produce a document certifying that the device complies with international standards. Such documents are issued by internationally certified testing labs to the manufacturers. The NBTC recently found that the details of some documents did not match those of the labs, and some labs even said they never issued certificates for some of the models in question.
Some importers told the regulator they had no idea whether the documents were false since they were provided by the manufacturers.