Parties voice concerns on 900MHz issue

 

A government source said no conclusion had come from the meeting but the secretariat asked all parties to submit the pros and cons of TOT keeping part of the 900MHz spectrum to continue providing services after the end of its concession next month. Then the office will pass their recommendations on to the Cabinet for its consideration.

The source said the ICT Ministry also wanted the planned auction of 900MHz licences to be postponed from November, pending the settlement of disputes between TOT and its concession holder Advanced Info Service (AIS) on ownership of telecom towers.

Currently, TOT has only 5,320 telecom towers of its own while AIS has 25,000. TOT claims that at least half of AIS’s towers belong to TOT under the concession contract.

TOT has asked for the right to hold the 900MHz spectrum for national-security services. For its part, the ICT Ministry believes the government should help TOT survive by assigning this spectrum to TOT. But the NBTC wants to reclaim the spectrum for auction this November.

The NBTC argues that it must by law manage spectra after the expiry of concession contracts and cannot assign them to any party without an auction. 

The NBTC is to hold a public hearing today on its plan to auction off this spectrum in November after TOT’s concession contract with AIS expires on September 30. Meanwhile, the TOT employees’ union yesterday held a seminar to defend the state agency’s ownership of the 900MHz spectrum, claiming this was the only way TOT could survive in the post-concession era.

More than 200 TOT employees joined the seminar ahead of today’s NBTC public hearing on draft rules for the 900MHz auction. 

Winai Kaewsawan, TOT vice president for its mobile development department, said the agency really needed to keep the 900MHz spectrum for survival.

“If we still have 900MHz on hand, TOT will need to invest only Bt5 billion for network expansion and roaming with its existing 3G network on 2.1GHz,” Winai said.

He said TOT would shift focus to serve as a provider of national-security telecommunication services by moving some network sites to border schools, as 900MHz is suitable for rural coverage.

“TOT will no longer be a burden for the government if we retain 900MHz,” he said. 

Anushit Thoopluang, president of the TOT workers’ union, said it had collected the names of around 500 employees, which it would submit to the NBTC at the public hearing today, backing TOT’s opposition to the plan to put the whole 900MHz spectrum up for auction.

Anushit said TOT was standing by its opinion that its rights to 900MHz were valid until 2025.

The union also said TOT needed the 900MHz spectrum to provide fourth-generation wireless broadband. 

TOT has 15MHz of bandwidth on the 2.1-gigahertz spectrum on which it has been providing 3G service since 2009, the first operator in Thailand to do so, but it has only 600,000 subscribers.