Newsfeed

The National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission yesterday announced that True Move H Universal Communication (TUC), a subsidiary of True Corp, had notified it that the company would hand over two bank guarantees on Wednesday and then receive its 4G licence for the 1800-megahertz spectrum next Friday.

Takorn Tantasith, NBTC secretary-general, said the commission’s telecom committee would call a meeting on Wednesday to examine the bank guarantees in order to award the licence on the proposed date at the auspicious time of 11am.

The second and third instalments will be worth a combined Bt19.896 billion, or half of the total upfront fee of Bt39.792 billion.

TUC paid the first instalment of Bt19.896 billion on Wednesday this week.

Once TUC gets the licence, the second-generation service on 1800MHz provided by True Move will be cut off. TUC will use the licence to provide wireless broadband service and also voice service to millions of users in True Group.

DTAC welcomes

court ruling

Lars Norling, chief executive officer of Total Access Communication, said he was pleased that the Supreme Administrative Court had revoked the injunction order of the Central Administrative Court prohibiting DTAC from sharing network infrastructure with 2,100-megahertz operators.

The Supreme Administrative Court revoked the injunction order yesterday. It ruled that the injunction order was not in compliance with the legal requirements and had an impact on the public at large.

The Supreme Administrative Court Order is final and cannot be appealed by CAT Telecom, which had filed for the injunction.

Norling said this development would enhance infrastructure sharing that would further service expansion and benefit the country.

“We are confident that the revocation of the court order will greatly benefit the company’s customers, as it will enable the company and DTAC TriNet Co to expand their networks rapidly to satisfy increasing demand for data services.”

low-cost Housing could total 1 million units: PM

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha said after meeting yesterday with permanent secretaries from all ministries that the number of homes under the Bt600,000 programme to provide houses for low-income earners could reach 1 million.

“The Ministry of Social Development and Human Security has estimated that if the programme runs for 10 years, it could reach hundreds of thousands to a million units, so we have to come up with a long-term housing-reform plan,” he said.

“The land for the project should be near where people work, and we should also look into the possibility of moving people who are living near waterways to elevated places that are rented or leased out by the government to protect our waterways,” he added.

The Finance Minister earlier said the initiative to offer houses costing no more than Bt600,000 per unit for those with wages and/or other income totalling less than Bt15,000 per month was in the negotiation process between the government’s economic team and private |developers.