CAT bids to halt 'interim measure'
CAT TELECOM will seek a Central Administrative Court injunction next week against the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission's decision in August to allow True Move and Digital Phone Co (DPC) to continue serving their customers for one mo
Hansa Chevapurke, CAT’s senior executive vice president for legal affairs, and business partner, yesterday said the state agency’s board on Tuesday had agreed to seek an injunction terminating such permission.
The NBTC had introduced the interim measure to prevent service disruption by allowing True and DPC to operate and migrate all existing users from their networks within one year. The measure took effect in late August.
“Since the concession contracts of both True and DPC expired on September 15, we have experienced more damages from lost business opportunity and revenue as a result of the decrease in the number of [the two companies’] existing customers,” Hansa said.
True Move now has 14 million users, down from 17 million on September 16, while DPC has reported that it now has only 30,000 subscribers, compared with 80,000 before the concession expiry date.
True Move has announced that it is trying to transfer all existing customers out of its network within four months, while DPC says it needs only one month to do so.
“All these customers should be taken care of by CAT, and not by any companies,” Hansa said.
Under the True Move and DPC concession contracts, these customers belong to CAT, he said, adding that CAT wants to move them to its 3G-850MHz network.
CAT on October 16 filed a damages claim at the Administrative Court in relation to the NBTC’s one-year extension measure, covering three issues. First, it sought a court ruling to terminate the granting of such permission.
Second, CAT considers Article 84(4) of the Frequency Allocation Law to be contrary to Article 47 of the Constitution.
The frequency law requires state agencies to return spectra to the NBTC, but the Constitution merely states that the NBTC can manage spectra but does not say it can reclaim them, the state agency argues.
CAT therefore petitioned the Administrative Court to ask the Constitutional Court to rule on whether the NBTC had the authority to reclaim spectra from state agencies for reallocation.
Third, CAT claimed damages of Bt275 billion from the NBTC, as it viewed the regulator’s resolution that True Move and DPC did not have to transfer their existing customers to CAT as being contrary to the concession contracts.
CAT said the damages amount was based on the assumption that without the NBTC’s interim measure, all these customers would have been taken care of by CAT.
