CAT hopes to bury dispute with DTAC and work together
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The planned network collaboration between CAT Telecom and Total Access Communication (DTAC) is part of the state agency's attempts to end dispute on their network ownership and to pave way for CAT to set up its network infrastructure fund in the future, C
Early last week CAT announced that it will sign a memo of understanding today with DTAC TriNet, to collaborate on DTAC’s telecom network infrastructure under CAT’s concession. DTN, which holds a licence to provide third-generation cellular service on the 2.1gigahertz spectrum, is keen to utilise DTAC network under the concession to expand its broadband cellular service.
Sanpachai said late this week that under the MoU collaboration, CAT and DTAC will talk to seek ways to end their network ownership dispute and to set up the joint venture to jointly manage the DTAC network assets under the concession.
He added that CAT wants to finish within this year the talks with DTAC on the network dispute solution and the establishment of the joint venture with DTN. The planned joint venture might have to be proceeded according to the 1992 Public-Private Joint Venture Act.
Sanpachai said that CAT is also in talks with True to end the network ownership dispute between CAT and its concession holder TrueMove and would propose to True to set up a joint venture to manage the entire TrueMove network under its concession.
In the future CAT will consolidate all these joint venture with DTAC and TrueMove and the total assets under its concessions into one to set up the telecom infrastructure fund, he added. This serves the government’s policy of supporting the state agencies to set up the infrastructure funds.
CAT granted the 1800MHz concessions to DTAC and TrueMove of True to provide cellular service. TrueMove concession ended last September, while that of DTAC will expire in 2018. By the Built-Transfer-Operate basis, both operators have to transfer their network asset under the concessions to CAT.
However, both declined to transfer some telecommunications towers to CAT, citing the towers belong to them, not CAT. This prompted CAT to bring the cases to the arbitration panels.
Currently DTAC has around 13,000 telecom towers under the concession, while TrueMove has about 9,000, and Digital Phone Co about 200.
In a separate matter, Sanpachai said CAT expected about Bt1 billion profit and Bt39 billion revenue this year.
For next year, CAT is expected to reach Bt52 billion in revenue, made up of Bt3.3 billion from international calls, Bt26 billion from wireless communications, Bt7.5 billion from broadband and data communications, Bt850 million from IT and cloud services, and Bt12 billion from concession contract. Of total wireless communications revenue, Bt22 billion is expected to be from wholesaling the 3G 850MHz bandwidth to Real Move.
CAT expects subscriber numbers for its 3G 850MHz service to surge to about 1 million users by the end of next year, up from the current 600,000.
