'Wireless and data will be main earners'

Next year onwards, CAT expects its existing 3G-850MHz wireless broadband service under CAT-True Corp partnership to generate annual revenue of around Bt50 billion and annual profit at around Bt7 billion.
CAT has BFKT (Thailand) of True Corp renting 3G-850MHz network to the state agency to generate bandwidth capacity mainly for wholesale. CAT has wholesaled 97 per cent of this capacity to True’s Real Move, while CAT resells the rest by its own under “My” brand. CAT is still waiting for the Cabinet to approve its plan to pay the network rental fee of around Bt14 billion to BFKT.
CAT expects its My subscriber number to reach around 2 million in 2025 from the current 100,000 after the service debuted in 2011.
Tanwadee said that CAT is in final talks with 365 Communications Co for a deal for the latter to resell this bandwidth capacity and expects more companies to approach the state agency for similar resale deals.
CAT also aims for data communications services to be another main revenue source. It is waiting for Cabinet to approve its plan to invest Bt4.5 billion to develop the fibre-optic based data communication services.
Next year the 3G-850MHz service is expected to account for around 40 per cent of CAT’s total revenue, followed by the data communications service at 30 per cent, and the international call service at 10 per cent. Currently the data communications service revenue accounts for 40 per cent of total revenue per year, followed by the international call service at 20 per cent, and other services for the remainder.
For the first seven months, CAT revenue (excluding concession revenue) was Bt8.945 billion with net loss of Bt2.35 billion – lower than the forecast of Bt3.63 |billion.