Digital bills 'need tightening'
Three members of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission recently expressed concern that the 10 digital-economy bills might not be addressing the right issues in regard to the watchdog - that is, what the public perceives to be its def
They also identified a number of other major areas of concern in the draft legislation.
Commissioners Prawit Leesatapornwongsa, Supinya Klangnarong and Thawatchai Jittrapanun presented their opinions to the NBTC secretary-general’s office late last month, following a meeting of the watchdog’s board on the NBTC bill and other related digital-economy legislation.
The board asked all 11 members to examine the 10 bills.
The three commissioners are of the opinion that the formulation of the bills lacks participation from the public and involved parties.
The bills might also run counter to the country’s reform direction in the future, given that the new constitution, which is being drafted, has yet to finalise the NBTC’s new role under the next charter, they said.
They are also concerned that the spectrum-allocation process could be subject to intervention by politicians, as the authority of the planned national digital economy committee would seem to overrule that of the NBTC.
The Cabinet recently approved a swathe of draft digital-economy bills, including the NBTC bill, which revises the watchdog’s powers.
Under the NBTC bill, the digital economy committee – to be chaired by the prime minister – will determine which frequencies are for security, public or commercial use. Only those for commercial use will be managed by the NBTC.
Existing laws allow the NBTC to allocate all frequencies.
Most of the members of the digital economy committee will come from state agencies. Under the bill, politicians might be able to easily intervene NBTC’s independence, the three NBTC members fear.
Prawit, Supinya and Thawatchai also share the view that the bills do not solve what the public perceives as the real problems concerning the NBTC.
According to public criticism, these are the agency’s inefficient performance in terms of legal and regulatory enforcement, and consumer protection.
Moreover, as the NBTC has been criticised for overspending its budget, related law should be amended to oblige it to require parliamentary approval of its budget, while its spending should be examined by neutral auditors, the three commissioners have suggested.
In a separate matter, the NBTC secretary-general’s office will ask the Cabinet to approve its plan to seek collaboration from other state agencies to support its requirement that all prepaid mobile-phone users register their SIM cards.
The matter has already been added to the Cabinet meeting agenda for next Tuesday. Approval of the plan would enable the NBTC to request cooperation from government agencies, including the Public Relations Department and the Interior Ministry.
The watchdog reported that some 100,000 prepaid SIM cards had been registered per day since its announcement last week of its intention to force the holders of around 90 million unregistered SIM cards to register their cards between February1 and July 31.
The move is a government national-policy measure for security reasons.
“We are aiming for about 500,000 SIM-card registrations a day to complete the project by July 31,” NBTC secretary-general Takorn Tantasith said yesterday.
