international call income beats CAT target

CAT Telecom's international call-service revenue during the first eight months of the year exceeded the target by Bt200 million.

CAT chairman Satit Limpongpan said yesterday that the state agency had overseas-call revenue of Bt4.6 billion during the period, against the target of Bt4.4 billion. The full-year target is Bt7.1 billion.

CAT's telecom businesses have fared well, despite the economic and political instability, he said.

The state agency will focus more on fostering its Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) 2000 1-x cellular service as it is pulling out of Thai Mobile, its cellular joint venture with TOT.

CAT's CDMA network covers 51 provinces, while that of Hutchison-CAT Wireless Multimedia covers the other 25. They are in talks on a possible joint service offering and marketing of the two networks.

Hutch is the joint venture of CAT and Hong Kong telecom giant Hutchison Telecom. The state agency granted Hutch the contract to market the CDMA service in 25 provinces.

CDMA technology boasts the capacity to transmit data services at faster speeds.

CAT is experiencing intense competition from private telecom operators, following the market's liberalisation by the National Telecommunications Commission.