CAT president Phisal Chorpokaudom said yesterday that Sommai's resignation was not due to any internal conflict in the state agency but to allow him to dedicate his time as a member of the National Legislative Assembly. Sommai assumed the post of CAT chairman on November 7.

Phisal added the executives would submit the state agency's 2007 business plan for the board's consideration before the end of this month. The plan focuses on improving the efficiency of state agency staff and seeking new revenue sources.

CAT posted revenues of Bt25 billion as of October and had profits of Bt3.950 billion.

Phisal added that CAT was confident of meeting the schedule for launching its Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) cellular service in 51 provinces early next year.

China's telecom equipment supplier Huawei Technologies has already finished rolling out 720 CDMA base stations for CAT out of the total 800 base stations.

The state agency has aimed the cellular business to be its flagship.

It is in talks with Hutchison-CAT Wireless Multimedia, which markets a similar CDMA cellular service

on a separate network in 25 provinces, on the possible collaboration of their networks.

Hutchison-CAT is the joint venture of CAT and Hong Kong telecom giant Hutchison Telecommunications. The company has leased the CDMA network in 25 provinces from BFKT, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hutchison, to market the cellular service.

Currently, Hutchison-CAT has about 750,000 subscribers. Under the marketing deal between CAT Telecom and Hutchison-CAT, the latter will pay a minimum of Bt7.9 billion to the state agency over the 15-year contract period.

CAT granted the marketing deal to Hutchison-CAT in 2000. Hutchison-CAT launched the service in 2003 and it has already generated Bt3 billion in revenue for the state agency.