Thai TV misses fee deadline; NBTC delays claiming bank guarantee
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ALTHOUGH THAI TV Company failed to pay the fees it owes the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission by last week’s deadline, the regulator is holding off on claiming a bank guarantee of more than Bt1.7 billion, pending a court ruling.
“Now we have to wait for a decision by the [Central Administrative] Court on whether it will issue a temporary injunction against the seizure of Thai TV Co’s bank guarantee worth Bt1.748 billion,” Sombat Leelapata, acting deputy secretary-general of the NBTC, said yesterday.
Early last month, the NBTC’s broadcasting committee decided to revoke Thai TV Co’s two digital-television licences as it had refused to pay the second instalment of its upfront licence fees since last year.
The committee also ordered Thai TV to pay the remaining five instalments worth Bt1.63 billion plus value-added tax as well as the unpaid annual licence fees and a daily fine of Bt60,000.
The company had been licensed to broadcast the Thai TV news channel 17 and Loca Family channel 15, which was later renamed MVTV Family.
Thai TV Co, led by media veteran Pantipa “Sister Tim” Sakulchai, had petitioned the court to issue a temporary injunction to protest against the NBTC’s administrative order but the court did not make a decision at the first hearing on February 23.
After that, the company was given until last Friday to pay its outstanding fees. It failed to do so, Sombat said.
However, as the Central Administrative Court has not yet made a final ruling on the injunction sought by Thai TV, “we have to suspend our decision to issue written notification to claim the Bt1.748-billion bank guarantee from Bangkok Bank, which is Thai TV Co’s financial guarantor”, he said.
According to a source in the banking industry, Bangkok Bank has reportedly set aside enough reserves to cover the Thai TV case even though it has not yet received a claim from the NBTC for the guarantee.
In last month’s hearing at the Central Administrative Court, NBTC member Supinya Klangnarong convinced the judges that granting a temporarily injunction could cause a domino effect on law enforcement both in the telecommunications and the broadcasting sector.
Also, such a decision might have an impact on the collection of state revenue from previous auctions of radio frequencies as well as upcoming ones, she explained.
