Three companies approach TOT for role in second phase 3G roll-out
South Korea's SK Telecom, Advanced Info Service and Samart Corp have separately approached TOT about joining the state enterprise in rolling out the second phase of its 2.1GHz network as well as providing 3G services.
“I don’t care what business models they adopt as long as they are legal,” Information and Communications Technology Minister Anudith Nakornthap said last week.
Wichian Mektrakarn, CEO of AIS, said the company had approached TOT without a partner as part of its exploration of business opportunities.
Anudith said he had instructed TOT to not take any loans whatsoever to fund this second phase in light of its weak cash flow. TOT plans to invest Bt30 billion on the second phase, which also includes a 4G network.
The minister went on to say that the three private telecom operators could use any business model including that of CAT Telecom and True Corp for the 3G-850MHz service as long as it complies with the law.
Already 5,000 base stations for TOT’s 2.1-gigahertz network have been installed, while the 5,320 sites for the first phase are expected to be completed by this month.
TOT became the first 3G-2.1GHz operator in Thailand when it launched the service in 2009 with five partners, including Samart, to offer the service on its network.
As of last month, number of subscribers had gone past 436,000 and 93,000 of them belong to TOT.
CAT and True signed their partnership deal in 2011. BFKT (Thailand) of True Corp rented the 850MHZ network for CAT and True to provide third-generation cellular service. In a wholesale deal, CAT sold the 850MHz bandwidth to True’s subsidiary Real Move, while CAT uses some of this bandwidth to provide its own retail service.
Meanwhile, the National Broadcasting and Telecommuni-cations Commission (NBTC) launched an investigation to see if BFKT had breached the telecom law by operating a network rental service under this partnership without a telecom licence.
In April, the committee concluded that the BFKT network rental service was not breaching the Telecom Business Act.
It said the service could not be considered a “telecom business” under Article 4(2), as BFKT has rented the network exclusively to CAT, so it was not bound by Article 7 of the law to apply for a licence.
There is also not enough evidence against the company.
However, the committee noted that the nature of BFKT’s network rental service is subject to Article 4(1) of the telecom law, which defines a telecom service as being under the telecom law. The NBTC is drawing up regulations to govern the network rental service and requires companies that lease networks in a similar manner to apply for an operating licence. It has yet to finish the regulations.
Late last week, Total Access Communication (DTAC) said that it was in negotiations with CAT to launch a 4G service on 24.5MHz of unused bandwidth from DTAC’s 1800MHz frequency by using a wholesale and resale business model, similar to the CAT-True deals.
DTAC holds 50MHz bandwidth of the 1800MHz spectrum, half of which is being used to serve its existing 2G subscribers.
