AWN network deal with TOT?
Advanced Wireless Network has proposed installing 3G and 4G networks for TOT and to possibly collaborate on wholesaling-reselling bandwidth from these planned networks, TOT president Yongyuth Wattanasin said recently.
However, he declined to elaborate.
The move is part of TOT’s plan to deploy 17,000 sites in the second phase its 3G-2.1GHz network rollout. Some 4,000 of these sites will also offer 4G.
Advanced Wireless Network or AWN, which is a subsidiary of Advanced Info Service (AIS), holds a 2.1GHz spectrum licence from the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC). AIS holds a cellular concession from TOT.
Wichian Mektrakarn, chief executive officer of AIS, said AWN has already made the proposal to TOT but declined to provide details.
A TOT source said AWN had proposed many partnership options, including building out the 3G and 4G networks nationwide for TOT, which in turn would wholesale 80 per cent of these networks’ bandwidth capacity to AWN. Another option is for AWN to construct these networks only in some main cities for TOT.
The source said AWN and TOT are negotiating on the revenue-sharing from this possible deal.
"While AWN proposed that TOT will gain a net Bt4 billion per year from this partnership, TOT bargained for Bt5 billion. AWN also proposed that it will be responsible for the cost of network roaming when this planned networks roams with other networks and also the payment of network interconnection charges between these planned networks with other telecom operators’ networks," the TOT source said.
"They are in talks on the details of the options and TOT has tried to wrap up the talks this year," the source said.
The final decision will be based on the need for TOT to collect enough revenue from the partnership to offset declining revenue from other sources.
TOT targets net profit of Bt8.5 billion this year. Next year, both TOT and CAT Telecom will start passing their concession revenue to the NBTC as required by the Frequency Allocation Law. The NBTC will pass their concession revenue to the state coffers.
TOT has enjoyed annual concession revenue of about Bt14 billion.
The possible AWN-TOT deal is similar to the partnership of CAT-True Corp, which sees True’s BFKT (Thailand) leasing the 3G-850MHz network nationwide for CAT to wholesale the bandwidth. The state enterprise has sold almost all the bandwidth to Real Move, another True subsidiary, to provide the service.
AWN has offered the service on 15MHz of bandwidth from the 3G-2.1GHz spectrum. The band is adjacent to the 15MHz band of TOT’s 2.1GHz spectrum. A partnership would give them a combined 30MHz of bandwidth to better serve their customers.
AIS has pursued all channels to acquire additional bandwidth to back up AWN’s existing 2.1GHz service. AIS’ 900MHz concession from TOT will expire in 2015. AWN has targeted 15 million 3G customers at the end of this year, up from the present 12 million.
