Takorn Tantasith is being tipped to be acting secretary-general of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) after serving as secretary-general for a full five-year term that ends on Jan 4.
The NBTC board will consider the appointment at a meeting by the year-end, said an NBTC commissioner who asked not to be named.
The existing 11 board members of the NBTC, elected in October 2011, will end their six-year term in October 2017.
An amended NBTC draft bill is scheduled to take effect by the year-end. The bill stipulates the NBTC will not be dissolved. But its management and operational structure will be reformed, with the number of commissioners reduced to seven from 11.
The two existing committees, with five members in charge of the telecom sector and five focused on broadcasting, will be dissolved to facilitate a flexible decision-making process.
The government is pushing the implementation of a series of digital economy-related draft bills including the draft of the new NBTC law, which is being revised by a committee of the National Legislative Assembly before being submitted to assembly members for voting.
The source said Mr Takorn, 56, is the most suitable person for the job during the recruiting process, which is expected to start in early 2017.
He has played prominent roles in the NBTC by cooperating with the military government and the Digital Economy and Society Ministry to serve the digital economy policy.
Among his achievements is the registration of prepaid SIM cards in a bid to stem the potential use of unregistered phone numbers to commit crimes or exploit the numbers for use in illicit activities.
Another important achievement was the auctions of a series of fourth-generation mobile licences that generated 273 billion baht in revenue to the state.
Of the total, 41.6 billion baht stemmed from auctioning three licences on the 2100-megahertz spectrum in 2012; 80.7 billion baht from the sale of two licences on 1800MHz spectrum; and 152 billion baht from auctioning two licences on the 900MHz spectrum in 2015.
The source said the NBTC during Mr Takorn's tenure has been praised by the government for dealing with inappropriate content on television and the internet.
"We need a guy like Mr Takorn to cooperate with the government, especially during the mourning period for His Majesty the King when we found a lot of content insulting the monarchy on social media networks," the source said.
The source said the NBTC board has the legal authority to appoint Mr Takorn as acting secretary-general without seeking an order from the prime minister to issue Section 112 of the Criminal Code.