CAT to seek legal opinion on True deal

TELECOMS

CAT Telecom plans to seek a legal interpretation from the Council of State on its third-generation (3G) network contract with its concessionaire True Corporation.

The state telecoms enterprise will ask if the contract comes under the 1992 Public-Private Joint Venture Act or not, Kittisak Sriprasert, CAT's chief executive, said.

If the contract comes under the joint venture law, it would have to be approved by the National Economic and Social Development Board (NESDB) first. The NESDB had not considered the contract before.

"If the council finds any violation, changes to the contract would be needed before it is passed to the Information and Communication Technology Ministry for further consideration," he said.

The contract as written, signed in 2011, was earlier judged by the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) to have violated Section 46 of the Frequency Allocation Act 2010, which requires licence holders and spectrum owners including CAT to manage spectrum rights on their own.

The telecom regulator issued a resolution on June 20 ordering CAT to amend six items in its contract with True that was signed in January 2011.

Under the deal, True took over the mobile business formerly run by the Hong Kong telecom giant Hutchison.

True subsidiary Real Move gained the rights to sell CAT's 3G service nationwide for 14.5 years, while another unit, Real Future, which owns BFKT (Thailand), was contracted to install 3G equipment on CAT's two nationwide cellular networks.

CAT last Tuesday signed a memorandum of understanding with True to amend the six issues in the contracts to comply with the order by the NBTC.

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Article source: http://www.thethailandlinks.com/2012/12/13/cat-to-seek-legal-opinion-on-true-deal/