The National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) is planning to distribute 4.78 million new subsidy coupons for digital TV equipment by late November.
The new coupons, valued at 690 baht each, will be for households that did not receive the first lot and for new houses registered after Sept 16, 2014, NBTC secretary-general Takorn Tantasith said on Friday.
The aim is to help the remaining viewers who have not yet switched from terrestrial broadcasting to the digital format, he added.
However, the coupons themselves will not be mailed to households by Thailand Post as in the past. Instead, the telecom regulator will mail a notification, which recipients can bring to a participating service centre selling set-top boxes. There, they can show the letter along with their ID and their eligibility for a subsidy can be verified against the database of the Provincial Administration Department.
Digital TV started in April 2014 with 24 channels but the rollout was far from smooth. Obstacles included the impact of the May coup, unclear regulations, and a delay in distributing subsidy coupons to households.
The first lot of digital TV coupons was distributed in October 2014 and expired in May 2015. They reached 8.3 million households but only 4.1 million were used.