AIS eyes 1m subscribers for fibre optic broadband

The company’s AIS Fibre brand is expected to see 300,000 subscribers by the end of this year, up from 200,000 now. It was launched in April.
Saran Phaloprakarn, senior vice president for fixed broadband business management, said yesterday that the brand currently occupied 2 per cent of the market, trailing the leaders – True Corp, Triple T Broadband and TOT.
About 70 per cent of its broadband subscribers are also AIS mobile-phone subscribers. AIS is acquiring 30,000-35,000 fixed-broadband subscribers monthly and expects to increase the rate to 40,000-45,000 by early next year.
If AIS wants to rank second, it needs at least 2 million subscribers. This could be achieved in four years.
AIS is installing the fibre-optic network, which is expected to cover all of Bangkok and the main areas of 27 provinces by year-end.
Today, AIS is also bringing out new competitive AIS Fibre packages, bundled with many privileges. The packages start at Bt590 a month for 20/7 megabits per second of connection speed. For AIS mobile-phone subscribers, the charge goes down to Bt531 per month. Other packages are also cheaper for them.