Head of marketing Patompob Suwansiri said yesterday that his company was expected to launch a third gateway in China within a month.

It has already completed building three gateways in China, which will enable it to start offering broadband in the Asian giant. He said the company was required to open all three gateways in China before it can start the service, and revenues from China will be realised early next year.

The company is holding talks with the Indian government for the right to provide the service in the subcontinent.

ShinSat estimates China and India will account for 25 and 15 per cent, respectively, of iPSTAR's bandwidth capacity of 45 gigabytes per second. In Japan, iPSTAR will be aimed at linking with the telecom network.

"We're upbeat about the prospects for growth," said chief financial officer Tanadit Charoenchan.

iPSTAR now provides broadband in Thailand, Burma, Vietnam, Australia and New Zealand.

Tanadit said ShinSat had yet to work out a serious plan to develop the Thaicom 6 satellite, which would depend on when the newly launched Thaicom 5 - 75 per cent of which is already in use - was fully occupied.

Currently, ShinSat operates Thaicom 1 and 2, which will expire in the next few years, iPSTAR and Thaicom 5. It de-orbited Thaicom 3 last month, due to a power-supply glitch, and customers were transferred to Thaicom 5.

ShinSat posted a third-quarter net loss of Bt747 million, compared with a net profit of Bt154.4 million in the same period last year.

The reversal was due chiefly to a write-off cost of Bt981 million for Thaicom 3 and depreciation costs for iPSTAR, without which there would have been a net loss of Bt60 million in the quarter. Tanadit said the grounding of Thaicom 3 meant ShinSat did not have to shoulder its depreciation costs of Bt160 million in the fourth quarter.

Total sales and service revenues stood at Bt1.634 billion, up 16.9 per cent year on year, mainly due to high sales growth of the company's iPSTAR signal-reception terminal. It sold 9,806 terminals in the third quarter, up from 5,213 units in the same period last year.

In the third quarter, the company sold 49,855 iPSTAR terminals in the regional markets.

In the first nine months of this year, ShinSat recorded sales and service revenues of Bt4.853 billion, up 14.13 per cent from Bt4.252 billion in the same period last year.

Tanadit said ShinSat was unlikely to be affected by the state investigation on the allegation that the takeover of Shin Corp by Singapore's Temasek Holdings breached Thai foreign-ownership law.

The law caps foreign holdings in telecom firms at 49 per cent. Shin owns 41 per cent of ShinSat.

Sirivish Toomgum

The Nation