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Advanced Info Service (AIS) sales staff say third-generation (3G) subscribers in Chiang Mai want network coverage beyond the city area. Most customers are teens and business people, the latter interested in exploring the technology's benefits to their operations.

AIS is the only cellular operator that has launched a post-paid 3G mobile broadband service in Chiang Mai, where it has some 30 base stations, using its constrained 900MHz spectrum.

AIS plans to increase its nationwide 3G base stations to over 1,900 from the original goal of 400, at a total cost of Bt6 billion. Some will be set up in Chiang Mai this year.

AIS has learnt a lot of lessons from Chiang Mai, where people crave mobile broadband Internet connection, not cool services like video calling. The 3G technology gives high-speed Internet connection to phones and laptops.

Narong Kongprasert, vice president of the Chiang Mai Chamber of Commerce, said he and two friends had been among the first to snap up AIS 3G phones to promote their businesses.

He wants to use 3G to send promotional material and product pictures to target customers with similar phones, but too few have them to make this feasible now, he told the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) hearing on 3G licensing yesterday.

Chamber representative Suthi Sangkavet said 3G could help hilltribe people and others in remote areas to show their goods wirelessly to distributors in the city.

Nipon Teera-ampol, professor of engineering at Chiang Mai University, sounded a warning note, however, saying that like PCs, 3G phones with their Internet capacity might bring new worries to parents of younger children.

The hearing also discussed appropriate licensing methods and licence numbers.

NTC commissioner Sethaporn Cusripituck said that if the NTC decided to auction licences it would give all the proceeds to the government.