DTAC eager to move from concession to licence environment

After a long delay, the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission is finally going to put the 3G services up for bidding. Jon, as the CEO of DTAC, how do you look at the prospect of your company participating?
First of all, I think it is great for the nation. As you know many of our neighbours have launched 3G services in prior years and some are even moving toward 4G, so I think from a national level it’s great that we are finally getting to this point, point one.
I think for the industry it is also really good. The industry wants to move from basic voice and SMS. That is what got us to this point. We see Facebook, we see social media, we see music streaming, we see financial services, radio streaming, so many services are available for our consumers and we just don’t have the capacity or the upgrade in technology to offer everything for the Thai consumers. And they have needs and they have demands.
And that kind of leads us to DTAC. We have been preparing for this, as you know, for several years. We couldn’t be more pleased that we are at this point. We see that the NBTC is tracking quite nicely to an October auction and we are preparing for it and looking forward to it. So I think it is great so far.

So you expect the bidding process will proceed smoothly? There won’t be any accident? Because in the past there have been political accidents or some obstacles.
Thailand is an interesting country, fascinating Thailand. I am very pleased with how the process is going. If you go back to December, we started with the first movement toward this process. The NBTC had just come in in Q4 [fourth quarter]. They moved quickly to draft the master plan, both in the industry and frequency sides. We went through public debates. Those were confirmed in January and February. We went through more public debates on it. It has moved as planned.
I am extremely impressed that the NBTC has started from scratch and followed their original timeline quite well. Can anything happen, yes. But right now we sit four or five weeks away and things look pretty good.

So we can expect that on September 28, DTAC will be making its way to the NBTC office to submit its application?

Absolutely. As you know, the processes that we go through, the pre-qualification phase, we filled out all our application. We feel that it is just a part of the process. We believe we will be pretty qualified and we are ready to go into the auction. We have completed most of our funding requirement. We will sign those documents in the next week. So from our financial standpoint, we are ready. From an internal standpoint, we are ready. So yeah, I am looking forward to it.

Are you concerned about any legal hurdle that might arise, because in the past a question regarding foreign ownership in a telecommunication company had been raised. Foreign ownership has been raised from 25 per cent to 49 per cent. Are you concerned that this question might linger on?
This has been something that has been hanging around DTAC for some years. We have always felt we comply with … we are part of the stock exchange, that’s a very rigorous process in itself. In 2010, we were also pre-qualified for the auction. So again, we’ve gone through a rigorous process.
This year, issues were raised again on foreign dominance and clarity on the ownership of DTAC. We believe that the shareholders and what they have done recently clarify this. The reintroduction of our founder, Khun Boonchai, really clarifies this. I think it is really fair. It is transparent. And I think if anyone has any further question, it is on public record. We are a Thai company. We are ready to go.

So the next phase, after you submit the documents, you will go through the qualification process and eventually the NBTC will pick the winners sometime in mid-October. Do you expect to be one of the bid winners? Do you have a crystal ball to see the future?
I don’t think anyone has a crystal ball, but I think I do have a group of eager shareholders. They want to move from a concession environment to a licence environment. We believe that maturity is the transition of our industry and something that benefits our consumers. So I have got eager shareholders.