More details were revealed yesterday of plans to merge CAT Telecom Plc and TOT Plc. Discussions between the two state agencies involve the creation of a new company to consolidate and manage their established and future networks.

A source at CAT said the new company would become the network provider, while CAT and TOT will act as service providers.

"This will make it easy for us to effectively manage our vast existing and future networks and make us the largest network provider in Thailand. The new company will also lease the networks to telecom operators," the source said.

As well as managing the network assets of both agencies, the new company will manage new networks arising from future investment.

TOT's network assets include a countrywide fixed-line voice and data network and a broadband network, while CAT owns an overseas call network and a high-speed Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) 2000 1-x cellular network, soon to be launched in 51 provinces.

Hutchison-CAT, which is 25 per cent owned by CAT Telecom, also owns a similar CDMA network in 25 provinces.

CAT and TOT also jointly own the 1900MHz cellular network of Thai Mobile, which can be developed to offer 3G wireless broadband services.

The plan to merge the two agencies comes originally from the Information and Communications Technology Ministry, which wants to improve their competitiveness and reduce their business redundancy.

The management of both state agencies has agreed that their owner, the Finance Ministry, should set up a holding firm to oversee CAT, TOT and the proposed network provider subsidiary.

In a separate matter, CAT yesterday signed a memorandum of understanding with King Mongkut's University of Technology Lat Krabang to commercially use products developed at the university with CAT's financial support.

It is the first time CAT has acknowledged the value of products developed in a sponsorship project involving research and development at about 15 leading universities. The project cost CAT Bt10 million per year, but until now there has been no sign of it applying the products commercially.

CAT's acting president, Phisal Jorphochaudom, said the agency wants to develop new value-added products as well as reducing the cost of importing technology.

One of the finished projects coming from its funding arrangement with the Lat Krabang institute is the so-called "intelligent taxi".

It comes in the form of a special box installed in taxis. When someone using a CDMA phone calls a central server, the taxi nearest to the caller is immediately informed and is shown the location of the caller.

This enables callers to be picked up by taxis as quickly as possible.

Phisal said CAT is interested in trying to deploy the technology with Hutchison-CAT, pending a feasibility study.

Usanee Mongkolporn

The Nation