TDRI chief slams 3G bid as 'fake' and 'calculated' | Bangkok Post: business

Business > Telecommunications

TELECOMS

TDRI chief slams 3G bid as 'fake' and 'calculated'

The president of the Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI) has slammed the government's "fake" auction for 3G mobile phone service licences, saying bidders got everything they wanted at an artificially low price.

Somkiat Tangkitvanich, TDRI president, alleged Sunday on the think-tank's website that the auction - organised by the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) - was fraught with irregularities.

Advanced Info Service (AIS) bid 14.6 billion baht, while Total Access Communications (Dtac) and True Corp bid 13.5 billion baht to win their licences.

This article is older than 60 days, which we reserve for our premium members only.You can subscribe to our premium member subscription, here.

Most Viewed

  • Thailand to bend to investors' needs

    TOKYO – Thailand will go the extra mile to accommodate the wishes of long-term Japanese investors by introducing new regulations more in line with the recommendations they have made, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said on Friday.

Forum

Your comments

  • wyle

    ThailandPost : 200

    Send message

    Discussion 2 : 22 Oct 2012 at 05.452

    As I have said before, there was no auction. The 3 companies were buying bandwidth at a set price. There would be nothing wrong with selling at a set price if the government would just be honest and say that is what they are doing. Why does Thailand always have to make things so difficult?

  • musashi

    United StatesPost : 457

    Send message

    Discussion 1 : 22 Oct 2012 at 05.021

    Somkiat "..revenue generated from the 3G auction in Thailand is one of the lowest."

    Well, the TDRI president may wish to take into account socio-economic factors and the fact that other countries had their auctions 5 years or more ago. At the medium/end of the technology life-cycle (other countries are at 4G), don't expect the prices to remain high.

    There will always be jokers like the TDRI chief who wants us to just scrap 3G and go back to using smoke signals for long distance communication.

First Previous 1  2  3 

Reply

Sign in once and access every part of the website at your convenience!

Please log in to our Bangkokpost.com community to post your comment.
You can sign in to the community by clicking here.

If you are not part of the community yet, please sign up here. By being part of this community you will get all these privileges.