TOT to offer terms of reference for partnership bids next week

The state agency has already held an informal meeting with five companies – Advanced Info Service (AIS), Total Access Communication (DTAC), True Corp, Mobile LTE and Tantawan Telecommunication – to sound them out on its plan to seek a partner to develop the service.
TOT holds 60 megahertz of the 2.3GHz spectrum for a term that will end in eight years. 
Those interested in being its partner will have to buy the TOR documents for Bt200,000. Once they submit the documents to make a partnership bid, they will hand over a bank guarantee worth about Bt200 million. TOT is expected to select a partner in the middle of this year.
TOT has been awaiting approval from the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission’s telecom committee on its revised business plan to offer fourth-generation services on this spectrum.
TOT will adopt a business model similar to that of the True Corp-CAT Telecom partnership, which offers a wireless broadband service on the 850MHz spectrum.
True’s wholly owned subsidiary BFKT (Thailand) has installed an 850MHz network for CAT to wholesale bandwidth mainly to True for the provision of the wireless broadband service.
TOT is expected to ask telecom companies to propose investments that would enable the 2.3GHz network to cover 80 per cent of the population within five years. It is also expected to ask the selected partner to commit to leasing 60 per cent of the network’s capacity. TOT will use the remaining capacity to provide its own cellular service and allocate spare capacity to mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs).
TOT hopes to gain Bt3.9 billion in net revenue a year from the 2.3GHz business, on par with that received from its partnership with AIS in offering the service on TOT’s 2.1GHz spectrum.