The conversion of mobilephone service concessions into licences should be completed within seven months after the Cabinet approves the plan, the state panel drafting the industry reform road map has suggested.
"The whole industry reform process will take 18 months," panel member Rom Hirunpruk said.
The ultimate goal of the reform programme is to create national broadband networks that will be used to the maximum to provide equal and affordable ICT services to the public.
The industry blueprint begins with the "K2" concession conversion plan, which will take seven months for the Finance Ministry to complete.
The ICT Ministry will in parallel set the future direction for the industry and will restructure TOT and CAT Telecom so that they can survive after losing their concession revenue.
TOT and CAT will both be split into what the panel calls NetCo, OpCo and telecom retail stores. Each OpCo will run the existing secondgeneration and new thirdgeneration (3G) cellular and other services, while NetCo operates the transmissionsystem infrastructure, such as signal towers, fibreoptic networks and submarine cable networks.
The ICT Ministry is expected to submit this industry reform framework for Cabinet consideration soon.
The Finance and ICT ministries set up the joint panel to draw up the telecomindustry reform plan, which includes the concession conversion plan and the survival plan for TOT and CAT. The panel will also hire a legal consultant and financial adviser to work out those aspects of concession conversion.
As part of the conversion, TOT and CAT will cancel the concessions of the private mobilephone operators, which will obtain licences from the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) so they can continue providing their telecom services. They will also be required to pay an asyetundetermined upfront fee to TOT and CAT.
The Finance Ministry, which floated the idea of terminating the concessions, wants to see all mobilephone operators come under a common NTC regime, instead of the overlapping NTC and state concession regimes.