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AIS CEO: NO REGRETS
Somchai Lertsutiwong, chief |executive officer of Advanced Info Service, said recently that he feels happy but no pangs of regret after AIS failed to win a much-needed 900MHz spectrum licence.
After the winners’ names were released on December 19, he saw that AIS employees, who had gone to cheer their bidding team at the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission’s head office, shared the same happiness with the bidding team. They understood that the final price was too high and not worth fighting for.
According to AIS’ statement after the auction, it decided to exit the auction because the bidding price “exceeded the company’s expected fair value”.
True Move H Universal Communication of True Corp and Jasmine Mobile Broadband of Jasmine International won the 900MHz bidding at record offers of Bt76.3 billion and Bt75.6 billion.
Advanced Wireless Network (AWN) of AIS stopped bidding at Bt75.98 billion and DTAC TriNet at Bt70.18 billion.
Somchai said that if AIS had won a licence, he would not have seen the unity of its employees, who are now busy offering 3G and 4G handsets to the company’s 11 million 2G users to migrate them to AWN’s 3G and 4G network before AIS’ 900MHz network has to be turned off.
“I told my staff we might have to work even during New Year as we’re competing against time,” he said.
Under the NBTC’s rules, once the NBTC grants the 900MHz licence to either TUC or JAS, AIS will have to immediately pull the plug on its 900MHz service.
HAPPY HARDY
This year, one of happiest persons in the tourism industry may be Mario Hardy, CEO of the Pacific Asia Travel Association.
He has also been busy as a bee taking care of many events and activities over the last 14 months since he took over the leadership of this international tourism organisation in November last year.
“What brings me happiness is having a lot of new Pata members,” he said.
Pata approved 165 new members this year. They are not only major airlines such as Turkey Airlines and Bangkok Airways, but also tourism organisations and companies from small countries.
Pata now has more than 800 members, including 88 government tourism organisations, 66 universities and educational institutions and 33 airlines and airports.
This year, Hardy led his team to host 15 events in Asia-Pacific, up from only three last year.
“We’ve already planned more events next year. One of them is the Adventure Travel and Responsible Tourism Conference and Mart scheduled for Chiang Rai in February,” he added.
