CAT goes on the offensive

The Nation (7 November 2007)

Business revamp aimed at revitalisation

State-owned agency CAT Telecom plans to revitalise its core businesses due to declining revenue and intensifying competition.

Senior executive vice president Marut Buranasetkul yesterday said the agency would upgrade the quality of its conventional 001 international-call service and reduce call rates for its 009 international service, which is based on Voice over Internet Protocol. The aim is to attract more customers.

The agency will also launch prepaid international-call cards called CAT Thai Card Plus in an effort to attract more corporate customers.

CAT's core businesses include international calling, data communications, e-business and cellular phone services.

The state agency will also aggressively promote its data services, such as data network leasing and international Internet gateway services, in response to tougher market competition.

The National Telecommunica-tions Commission awarded additional international Internet gateway licences last year to open up a market that had earlier been dominated by CAT.

Marut said CAT would soon provide an international Internet gateway service covering Indochina. CAT signed a memorandum of understanding with the Hong Kong telecom giant Hutchison Telecom International on Friday. The deal revamps the collaboration between the two organisations in providing a code division multiple access (CDMA) 2000 1-x cellular service in Thailand.

The Thai company that markets the service, Hutchison-CAT Wireless Multimedia, is 26-per-cent owned by CAT, while Hutchison Telecom holds the rest. Under a marketing contract with CAT, the company markets the CDMA cellular service under the Hutch brand.

Hutchison-CAT leases a CDMA network covering 25 provinces from BFKT, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hutchison Telecom. CAT owns a CDMA network covering another 51 provinces, which will be soft-launched next month.

Under the memorandum signed on Friday, BFKT will transfer its CDMA network to CAT, so the state agency will become the sole owner of a CDMA network covering all provinces. It will then lease the nationwide network to Hutchison-CAT to market the cellular service.

Marut said that in the e-business field, CAT Telecom would launch an M Post service. Declining to reveal details at this stage, he said it would allow consumers to reserve various kinds of tickets and buy products via CAT's channels. As well, it will introduce a telephone-based directory information service.

During the first nine months of this year, CAT recorded revenue of Bt34.85 billion, up from Bt22.348 billion received in the same period last year. This was mainly due to higher concession fees from its mobile phone concessionaires.

The state agency's concession revenue in the first nine months was Bt19.179 billion, well up from the Bt7.207 billion recorded in the first nine months of 2006. CAT owns the mobile-phone concessions of Total Access Communication (DTAC), the country's second-largest cellular operator, True Move, the third-largest, and Digital Phone.

Its international call revenue was Bt7.159 billion, falling from Bt7.324 billion a year before, while its data service generated higher revenue of Bt6.055 billion, up from Bt5.424 billion.

Its cellular business contributed Bt1.484 billion during the first nine months of this year, down from Bt1.584 billion.