CAT president Phisal Jorpochaudom said last week that the consortium was made up of Malaysia's CIMB and Bua Luang Securities. It will appraise the value of Hutchison-CAT's Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) 2000 1-X network in the 25 provinces.

Hutchison-CAT is the 75:25 joint venture of Hong Kong's telecom giant Hutchison Telecom and CAT.

Hutchison-CAT has marketed the CDMA cellular service via the network in 25 provinces, while CAT has provided a similar service via its own separate CDMA network in 51 provinces.

Pisal said CAT and Hutchison had also awarded a contract to legal adviser FBLP to study all legal aspects of the plan to merge the two CDMA networks.

He added that the network appraisal and the legal study would have to be finished in July.

CAT chief financial officer Jirayuth Rungsrithong said CAT would propose that Hutchison-CAT transfer the network in the 25 provinces to the state agency, just as it had done with other private cellular concessionaires.

Then CAT and Hutchison-CAT will merge their networks and set up a joint venture to lease the consolidated networks from CAT to market the cellular service nationwide.

Once the process is completed as planned, Hutchison-CAT will no longer have to share with CAT its revenues from the network in 25 provinces, and CAT will not have to build its own network in those provinces, Jirayuth added.

Hutchison-CAT has shared revenues of Bt5.7 billion to Bt6 billion per year with the state agency.

"I believe we'll be able to reach the agreement on the network merger with Hutchison-CAT by July. Both of us will lose a business opportunity if we fail to wrap up the deal," Jirayuth added.

Hutchison-CAT had 728,000 subscribers as of the end of last year.

Telecom Reporters

The Nation