Hard line urged on operators’ pleas

Granting the operators’ requests to ease the financial burden of the upfront fees for the licences would also undermine the confidence of investors in Thailand, Somkiat said yesterday.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha asked Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam to expedite his exploration of ways to reduce the problems of the digital TV licence holders and also those of the two 900MHz licence holders, Advanced Wireless Network (AWN) and TrueMove H Universal Communication (TUC).
The premier gave guidelines to Wissanu that the solutions should be based on principles that enable the private operators to continue to do business, that don’t hurt investor confidence and that the operators had to accept they are subject to business risks. Moreover, the solutions must not affect the public interest.
Somkiat said that based on these guidelines, the government seems to understand what the public interest is, but not so the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC).
Somkiat said there was no good reason for the NBTC to help AWN and TUC, given that their parent companies Advanced Info Service and True Corp, respectively, both reported net profits last year.
True's mobile phone business has also seen its market share increase sharply over the past three years. Unlike the case of the digital TV operators, AWN and TUC are still financially healthy.
He added that what investors feared the most was an uncertain regulatory environment. Frequent rule changes, especially those that could favour some private players, may damage investor confidence and the NBTC's credibility.
AWN and TUC proposed to the junta last June that the Article 44 special power held by the junta chief under the interim constitution be invoked to allow them to divide the final instalments of the 900MHz spectrum licence upfront fee into multiple tranches.
AWN and TUC are scheduled to pay the hefty final instalments of Bt59.574 billion and Bt60.218 billion, respectively, in 2020. The junta had consulted the watchdog on the two operators' requests.
The NBTC recommended that they should be allowed to split the final instalment payment into five tranches and that they pay interest of 1.5 per cent, based on the Bank of Thailand's policy rate.
Somkiat said that what the NBTC proposed to the government amounted to putting the interest of the private operators ahead of that of the public.
Under the auction rules for the 900MHz spectrum, the licence holders must pay interest of 15 per cent per year if they fail to pay the instalments on the due dates. If, under the NBTC’s proposal, they can pay only 1.5 per cent interest per year, according to Somkiat, the difference between these two interest rate payments is Bt15 billion per operator.
While the NBTC claimed that easing the operators’ financial burden would enable them to save costs and encourage them to enter the planned 1800MHz licence auction and ensure meaningful bid competition, Somkiat said this assertion was a product of the NBTC’s own imagination and lacked any valid evidence.
He believes that the two operators would not bid fiercely in the 1800MHz auction as they had already clinched huge spectrum bandwidth in past auctions. One way to ensure to meaningful bid competition is to create the conditions that encourage newcomers to join in.
In the absence of any compelling reasons for concessions from the authorities, Somkiat said the NBTC should ensure that it regulates the market in accordance with only the public interest and that fair treatment is given to all players.