Digital-TV network providers will be allowed to share investment costs

Natee Sukonrat, chairman of the broadcasting committee of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission, announced this yesterday after some analogue-TV broadcasters had expressed concern that they could face financial difficulties if they had to shoulder on their own the investment cost of new digital transmitters to cover all 22 million households.
 He said the panel would open discussions with any broadcasters wishing to collaborate in this way, once they received licences to provide digital terrestrial TV networks.
 He added that existing analogue free-TV broadcasters already had their own transmitters and broadcasting towers, and that these facilities were very important for the roll-out plan for digital terrestrial broadcasting in the Kingdom.
 The broadcasting committee will, therefore, grant licences first to incumbent public analogue free-TV broadcasters.
 Additionally, Channel 5 has 40 broadcasting sites, while MCOT has 35 towers for Modernine TV and BEC’s Thai TV3. The Public Relation Department’s Channel 11 has 50 transmission sites, and Thai Public Broadcasting Service (ThaiPBS) has 40.
 However, Natee said his panel had not yet determined the exact application date for the “beauty contest” for five licences for digital-TV network providers, which are also called “multiplexers”.
 Channel 5, MCOT, Channel 11 and Thai PBS have already expressed interest in applying for these licences. In the beauty contest, each network provider will be able to hold more than one licence.
 The process is expected to be completed before the spectrum auction of 24 licences of commercial digital terrestrial TV channels in October.
 To prepare for this opportunity, incumbent public TV broadcasters such as MCOT, Channel 11 and Thai PBS plan to form a consortium to manage a single network for digital-TV operators.
 Under this partnership, they will also obtain their own individual licences for digital-TV infrastructure and networks.
 Sura Gaintanasilp, an executive vice president at MCOT, said the company and its partners could reduce the investment cost entailed in building separate digital-TV networks by sharing a network in this way.
 Meanwhile, an industry insider told The Nation that the Royal Thai Army was planning to isolate its digital-TV network from the planned consortium of the three public TV broadcasters for security reasons.
 Apart from bidding for two licences for infrastructure and network provision, the Army plans to hold a licence to operate a public digital terrestrial TV channel for national security purposes, on top of the current analogue Channel 5.