Samart i-Mobile to return 300,000 

Pravit Leestapornvongsa, a member of the telecom panel, said Samart i-Mobile deemed price competition from CAT Telecom’s MY third-generation cellular service as unfair and was waiting to talk with the state telecom agency on possible new terms and conditions for its contract as a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO).
Samart i-Mobile, a subsidiary of Samart Corp, is an MVNO that leases part of the CAT network to provide cellular services. CAT has wholesaled a big part of the bandwidth it holds on the 850-megahertz spectrum to MVNOs while using the remaining bandwidth to offer its own 3G service under the MY brand. 
The NBTC assigned the 300,000 numbers to Samart i-Mobile on September 27, but shortly afterwards, on October 3, the company told the NBTC it wanted to return them. 
Samart i-Mobile has two MVNO licences, one operated by Samart i-Mobile Plus under a partnership with TOT and the other by itself under the CAT partnership. Samart i-Mobile Plus currently has around 10,000 users, while Samart i-Mobile has around 40,000. 
An NBTC source said some MVNOs including Samart i-Mobile had even considered pulling out of the business, claiming that they cannot afford the network-rental fees charged by CAT. 
The Thailand MVNO Club, all of whose members have contracts with CAT, has asked the NBTC to help them seek new contract conditions from the state telecom agency. It also requested that the NBTC adjust the annual licence fees to help the MVNOs.
Recently CAT’s president, Colonel Sanpachai Huvanandana, said the agency would review the terms and conditions of its contracts with MVNOs to help them survive the tough competition in the cellular service market. 
He said CAT was aware of the problems the MVNOs were facing, and had already cancelled a package under which MY had offered its subscribers unlimited data usage for only Bt139 per month. The cancellation was aimed at helping its MVNO partners survive the competition from CAT itself.