TOT broadband teams bike in with free service in South

Earlier it was difficult and took time for TOT's service vans to reach the homes of customers, most of which were located in small sois. The TOT solved the problem by launching a service team to travel by motorcycles fitted with service tools, providing free services from broadband installation to computer repairs.

Chettar Konrakun, acting executive vice president for regional sales and service in the southern area, said the service was piloted in Pattani in January before expanding to other southern provinces.

He said the service has got good feedback and gets service requests about 30 times a day. Most of the customers' problems relate to system crash and virus intrusion.

Currently every TOT branch in the South has three motorcycles to provide such service.

TOT has 120,000 broadband and 600,000 home-telephone subscribers in the South. It targets a total of 150,000 broadband subscribers in the region by the end of this year.

"The region shows high demand for broadband service because people want to stay updated with news and information," he added.

TOT has targeted a total of 800,000 broadband-Internet subscribers this year, up from 500,000 now. The state agency plans to roll out an additional 3 million ports for broadband-Internet across the country by 2010, to serve high demand. Of those, more than 1 million will be created in two years at a cost of Bt3 billion.

The state agency has spent more than Bt7 billion in recent years to create its broadband-Internet network. Its broadband-Internet business has generated Bt4 billion annually, or Bt667 per subscriber per month.

At present, Thailand has more than 1 million broadband-Internet subscribers, of whom more than 600,000 belong to True, which holds the TOT concession.