CAT approves bandwidth transfer but junta must allow it
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CAT Telecom's board has thrown a hot potato at the government by requesting it make a decision on whether the operator can conditionally transfer for auction five megahertz of bandwidth held by Total Access Communication (DTAC) on the 1,800MHz spectrum.
The board yesterday approved the plan to transfer the bandwidth to the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) for auction.
However, the transfer can only happen on the condition that it be allowed to use the remaining 20MHz bandwidth of this spectrum until the end of its licence in 2025, instead of until 2018 when the DTAC concession under CAT expires.
Sanpachai Huvanandana, CAT acting chief executive officer, said that the board asked the Information and Communication Technology Ministry to ask the government to make a decision on matter.
He added that the state agency wanted to transfer the bandwidth to support the auction but it needed the government to make a decision or CAT risked being sued as some parties might view the transfer as possibly affecting its business.
Whatever the government decided, CAT will follow, he said.
The ministry will discuss this issue with the ad hoc National Digital Economy Committee tomorrow.
CAT was granted a concession to allow DTAC to use 50MHz of the bandwidth, of which it uses only half.
Recently CAT said that it and DTAC had reached an agreement to transfer five MHz bandwidth of DTAC’s spectrum in the idled 25MHz for auction.
If the NBTC adds the five MHz bandwidth to its auction plan, it would have a total of 30MHz bandwidth of the 1800MHz spectrum up for grabs. The original plan was to have 25MHz of bandwidth.
Takorn Tantasith, secretary general of the NBTC, said that since there was no government policy on this spectrum transfer, the NBTC board would today consider the original auction plan featuring the 25MHz of bandwidth.
