NBTC nods to plan for True, Digital Phone clients after concessions

Two commissioners voted against the draft – Prawit Leesatapornwongsa and Supinya Klangnarong.
The NBTC has 11 members but two were absent.
Both Supinya and Prawit have been concerned that the draft might face a legal challenge as there is no law giving the NBTC the authority to allow any party to take care of the 17 million subscribers of these two cellular operators after their concessions expire.
According to the draft, the NBTC will award a one-year licence to a party to look after all these 17 million users.
This party will have to pay a licence fee.
Prawit said the draft might face a legal challenge from CAT Telecom, which granted TrueMove and DPC their concessions. CAT has already asked the ICT Ministry to seek permission from the Cabinet for the state enterprise to oversee these 17 million subscribers.
But NBTC vice chairman Settapong Malisuwan said the regulator has to take responsibility for these subscribers.
Takorn Tantasit, the NBTC’s secretary-general, said the NBTC would hold a public hearing on this draft within 30 days and will consider the draft again in August after the hearing.
The NBTC will specify the name of the party it will assign to oversee the 17 million subscribers after the complete hearing of the draft.
The NBTC also agreed to appoint the joint committee of the telecom and broadcasting committees to resolve the conflict over use of the 700MHz band.
The broadcasting committee wants to reserve the 510-740MHz band for digital terrestrial TV broadcasting, but the telecom committee and other international telecom bodies want the NBTC to dedicate this band to mobile broadband.