DTAC, Facebook launch official partnership

Having already been working together for almost a year, the move aims to support both companies’ missions – Facebook’s Internet.org and DTAC’s Internet for All – which respectively aim to get the rest of the world connected to the Internet, and the 60 per cent of Thais who are currently unconnected.

DTAC chief marketing officer Sigvart Voss Eriksen said the collaboration formed part of the listed company’s Internet for All mission to get 80 per cent of DTAC’s users to be  online  by 2017, from just 40 per cent at present. 

Thanks to these efforts, the company hopes the penetration rate will rise to 50 per cent by next year. 

“This collaboration is one big step in increasing Internet penetration in Thailand. This mission is not just about the network, promotion and pricing, as it is also about building the country’s digital economy. We will be a part of that, and we cannot do it alone. We need partnership, and Facebook is a significant partner with a similar mission to get people online,” said Eriksen.

DTAC is the sixth mobile operator around the world with which the social-media giant has launched an official partnership of this sort, he added. 

Pakorn Pannachet, senior vice president of DTAC’s Market Division, said the company currently had some 11 million mobile Internet users, all linked to Facebook. 

About 8 million of them are prepaid customers, a number which the company aims to double to 16 million by the end of next year, largely due to the partnership with Facebook. 

“We have prepared a budget of more than Bt100 million for Facebook and DTAC’s Happy for running marketing campaigns and activities for six months,” said Pakorn.

Under the partnership, Happy users can use Facebook, instantly after activation, with no mobile data charges for three months. 

Users who top up Bt60 or more within one week will receive free Facebook access for between 30 days and three months. 

Facebook’s director of Global Operator Partnerships, Markku Makelainen, said that only one-third of the world’s population was connected, and partnerships with mobile operators such as DTAC would help the company in its mission to get the rest of them online.

“We will launch several more campaigns and services. For example, by November, we will launch a new service [feature] to make it easier to buy data packages from DTAC via the Facebook app platform,” he said.

Facebook has around 24.5 million monthly users in Thailand, with some 16 million of them using Facebook on their mobiles every day. On average, they stay on Facebook around 2.5 hours per day.