AIS settles its arbitration dispute with TOT, hands over ownership of 13,198 telecom towers
Thailand's most updated English news website, newspaper english, breaking news : The Nation
ADVANCED INFO Service (AIS) has agreed to settle the arbitration dispute over ownership of 13,198 telecom towers with TOT by agreeing to hand over all these towers to the state agency, TOT acting president Montchai Noosong said.
He added that AIS had also proposed to rent all these towers and 900MHz cellular base stations from TOT for 15 years. AIS will pay a rental fee of Bt5.6 billion per year during the first five years, and Bt3.6 billion per year during the remaining period.
AIS has also proposed to pay rental fee for two years on behalf of TOT for the land plots on which these telecom towers are located, Montchai said.
During the AIS cellular service offering under the TOT concession, AIS had paid the land plot rent to the land owners directly.
However, TOT has yet to finish drafting contracts with AIS on all these rental fees, as it wants to consider similar network rental fee proposals from Jasmine International and True Corp.
Montchai said that JAS |had approached TOT to lease these telecom towers from the state agency.
True has approached TOT to lease the state agency’s cellular base stations. Both JAS and True won a 900MHz licence each in an auction held by the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission last month.
AIS was the former TOT concession holder. Both have engaged in arbitration dispute over ownership of the 13,198 towers under the concession.
Montchai added that TOT has sent a draft of the memorandum of understanding (MoU) on a 3G-service partnership between AIS and TOT to the Office of the Attorney-General for consideration and was yet to get it back.
Under the MoU, AIS will build 10,000 of the 2.1GHz cellular base stations for TOT and will buy 80 per cent of bandwidth capacity of this spectrum for 10 years to provide the service. TOT will gain net revenue of Bt3.9 billion per year from this partnership.
AIS is keen to be TOT’s partner to provide 3G service on the state agency’s 2.1GHz spectrum.
AIS won the 1800MHz licence in the NBTC’s auction last November but failed to clinch the 900MHz licence in the auction last month. AIS currently offers wireless broadband service on the 2.1GHz spectrum.
It will officially launch its 4G service on 1800MHz tomorrow.
