CAT receives highest number of migrating subscribers in Jan-Aug
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CAT Telecom gained the most subscribers migrating from other mobile phone networks during the first eight months of this year, according to mobile number porting service operator Clearing House Co.
In August alone, CAT welcomed 160,894 migrators via mobile phone number porting, bringing its total for the first eight months to 737,780.
CAT’s networks include one with 13,500 3G-850MHz base stations that it has leased from True’s subsidiary BFKT (Thailand).
CAT wholesales 3G bandwidth to True’s subsidiary Real Move. Most of the migrators to CAT came to use Real Move’s services.
Mobile number portability allows users to retain their numbers when changing from one provider to another.
In the first eight months, 652,994 of TrueMove’s 17 million subscribers switched to CAT ahead of the ending of TrueMove’s concession in mid-September, while 42,053 subscribers of Advanced Info Service (AIS) and 33,007 subscribers of Total Access Communication Services (DTAC) also migrated to CAT via porting.
During the period, AIS attracted 25,803 subscribers from DTAC and 11,051 subscribers from TrueMove but lost 29,842 to DTAC. DTAC was joined by 9,346 subscribers from TrueMove.
After AIS’ affiliate Advanced Wireless Network (AWN) started offering 3G-2.1GHz service in May, it saw a huge swarm of migrators, but most were AIS’ existing 2G customers.
From May-August, AWN had 3,158,055 subscribers, mostly ported to it by AIS, whose concession expires in 2015. AWN also acquired 10,887 customers from DTAC and 4,641 from TrueMove.
DTAC’s unit dtac TriNet received 551,443 customers between June, when it launched its 3G-2.1GHz, and August. They were mostly ported from DTAC’s 2G service, which added only 118 customers from AIS and 66 from TrueMove.
According to the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission, currently AWN has 12 million subscribers, dtac TriNet 5 million and True’s Real Future 700,000.
However True Move H has reported that it has reached 7 million subscribers from both 3G-850MHz and 2.1GHz services.
