Firms urged to back TOT-CAT plan

The Nation (23 November 2007)

TOT yesterday urged private telecom operators to sign a deal supporting TOT and CAT Telecom's plan to be the country's joint national telecommunications network provider.

Representatives of mobile-phone operators opposed the plan, which they regard as a state attempt to monopolise the networks. They said TOT's move would violate the fair-competition rules of the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC).

TOT called the meeting with Advanced Info Service, Total Access Communication, True Corp and TT&T yesterday to urge them to agree to support the plan by signing the memorandum of understanding, which will be presented to them soon.

The state agency floated the idea of becoming the national network provider to the four firms in a meeting on Tuesday this week and set up a committee chaired by board director ML Anuporn Kashemsant to work out further details of the project. A TOT source said that ML Anuporn yesterday declared that he would soon consult with the NTC on the project.

ML Anuporn added that the private telecom operators should not compete with TOT and CAT in offering network services but they could lease the networks from both to provide the services in competition with one another.

Legally, TOT and CAT are owners of their mobile concessionaires' networks but they cannot utilise them before the end of their concession periods.

A representative of TT&T proposed in the meeting that all of them set up a joint venture to operate the networks.

Each of the four private concessions would hold 20 per cent in the joint venture, while CAT and TOT would hold the remainder proportionately.