True Corp to splurge Bt20 bn on mobile, broadband platforms

“The mobile-phone network expansion will help us achieve a 30-per-cent share of total cellular-service revenue in Thailand next year, up from the current 25 per cent,” he said. 
True subsidiary True Move H Universal Communication holds licences to operate on the 2.1-gigahertz, 900-megahertz, and 1,800MHz spectra.
True group is also considering seeking more business opportunities in the video-content business in the regional market, he said. 
Last week True announced a management restructuring by appointing Suphachai as executive committee chairman. 
It also appointed deputy chief executive officer Vichaow Rakphong-phairoj, 59, and group chief operating officer Adhiruth Thothavee-sansuk, 53, as co-presidents. 
The appointments, which took effective on Tuesday, follow Suphachai recently becoming CEO of True parent Charoen Pokphand (CP) group.
Suphachai said Vichaow and Adhiruth “are like yin-yang. They have experienced this telecom business for long time and have gone through good times and bad times in the industry together.” 
Vichaow, who has been with the True group for 25 years, will take charge of commercial operations, including mobile-phone service, broadband Internet and the TrueVisions pay-TV service.
Adhiruth, who has been with the group for 19 years, will take care of the operation side, from overall management to information-technology networks and customer service.
Suphachai’s executive committee comprises 10 top management personnel, including the two co-presidents, the group chief financial officer, and the group chief commercial officer.
True group has yet to announce its 2016 fourth-quarter financial results. 

TV revenue 
Suphachai said the revenue of True TV businesses last year, including TrueVisions and two terrestrial digital TV channels, TNN and True4U, was not quite good enough but they did not post losses. 
The TrueVisions operation alone is quite good but the two digital-TV channels experienced high costs associated with instalment payments of the upfront licence fee, he added. 
“But this year the two digital-TV channels will reach the break-even point. Earlier we had expected that they would break even last year.
“We didn’t make a wrong decision bidding to grab the two digital-TV licences. It’s our policy to fulfil our convergent model,” he said. 
TrueVisions has 2.5 million subscribers, of whom 1.4 million pay a monthly subscription fee, while the rest purchased satellite dishes and pay-TV boxes on a one-off basis.
TrueVisions will soon launch on its pay-TV channel True Movies HD 3 to offer newly released Hollywood and international movies, with the aim of serving customers who love foreign films. This is part of its continued offering of new programmes to replace HBO channels that the company lost in December after failing to renew its HBO contract.
Suphachai said TrueVisions had changed its strategy to acquire new TV programmes to buying the best programmes out of whole packages and repackaging them for viewers. 
It will no longer purchase packages of programmes, some of which have little attractive content.
He believes that that the pay-TV business will continue to exist for at least another 20 years, despite the threat from over-the-top TV operators, which deliver TV programmes on mobile phones and broadband Internet.
“People still love to watch TV programmes from a TV screen more than on a second screen [mobile phone or tablet] or via the broadband network,” he said.