TOT spends Bt40 mn on 3G promotion

Senior executive vice president Wichien Naksrinual yesterday said the budget would be used right up until the service launch date. The state agency has already agreed to pay Bt25 million to production house Matching Studio to hold marketing events and buy media space for the 3G service.

TOT has set aside 500,000 mobile-phone numbers for the 3G service, but it will revise how many numbers it will assign to each of the five companies selected to provide the service on a mobile virtual-network operator (MVNO) basis.

The state agency had planned to assign 100,000 numbers to each one of them but recently decided to market the service itself via 100,000 numbers.

The five MVNO companies are 365 Communication, Loxley, Samart, IEC and M Consultant. An MVNO is a company without its own network that must lease network and airtime from someone else.

Samart and 365 Communication will be the first two MVNO companies to debut the service for TOT on December 3.

Meanwhile, the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) board yesterday granted approval to TOT to lease its 3G network to companies on MVNO basis.

Wichien said TOT would tomorrow finalise the maximum and minimum airtime rates for 3G service. It plans to roll out the new 3G network nationwide at a cost of more than Bt20 billion, 80 per cent of which will be financed by foreign laons.

TOT president Varut Suvakorn said if the Finance Ministry agreed to guarantee the borrowing for the project, it would be possible to obtain a low-interest loan that would enable the project to break even within five to eight years.

However, if the ministry declines to back the loans, the project would not break even for 12 years.

During a meeting last week, the economic ministers advised TOT to wait for the NTC to clear all legal doubts about whether it had the authority to grant the 3G licences in the first place before rolling out the new 3G network.

But on Monday, Information and Communications Technology Minister Ranongruk Suwanchawee urged TOT to move on with the plan.