OPINION

One-eyed view

It is quite natural for authoritarian rulers to share the same point of view: I am right and everyone else is wrong.

The US ambassador is wrong, the UN is ignorant, the EU member nations are unsophisticated and our citizens must keep their mouths shut as well, primarily because they might have differing views (although those views are not known at present, they certainly must be ill-conceived anyway).

The unassailable rationale for this is -- I am right and everyone else is wrong, isn't it self-evident?

I must be naïve because I don't understand why each government in Thailand has to have its own constitution. I don't see other democracies doing this? On the other hand as Will Rogers once said: "One of the evils of democracy is you have to put up with the man you elect whether you want him or not. That's why we call it democracy."

Go Trump, and long live Rodrigo Duterte!

Re "US envoy erred", (BP, May 17)

Three cheers for the PM for showing how little the ambassador knows. The ambassador probably got his info with a stop in Dubai on the way to Thailand. Seems none of the envoys wants to look back 10 years and see what has transpired during that time. Doing so would put a stopper in some of these ignorant idiots.

When can we move beyond the legacy thinking of Build, Operate and Transfer used in our telecoms sector? I agree that spectrum is a finite resource and must be managed carefully but the notion of having to hand over the network and its customers to TOT at the end of the concession is beyond ridiculous.

My most recent foray into the world of Thailand's mobile telcos has been one of the worst customer experiences I have faced for a long time. When 4G networks were in trial mode I had no issues at all. Since the farce that was the spectrum auction, now my operator has spun out their 4G assets as a physically separate network. The impact? When travelling in many places outside of Bangkok I end up roaming onto the same operator's 3G network as if I was visiting from overseas. The answer provided by the operator is to go into my settings and force my mobile onto a 3G network, a process I have to do frequently as I move around the country. This clunky workaround and awful customer experience stems from the fear of what happens at the end of the concession, when the non-state owned concession holder has to hand back the network to the TOT. We've seen how inefficient and ineffective they are at running a mobile network with the failure of TOT 3G and the really small number of customers they hold.

Why would we give these assets back just to have them run into the ground? Also, knowing I have to hand it back what incentive do I have for updating my assets and keeping them current, which means better phone service for all of us? It's time to move away from these legacy behaviours if we really want to embrace a digital Thailand.

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that just a couple of days before the end of every month, the Thai baht gains in strength?

Could this possibly have to do with the hundreds of millions of dollars of foreign pension money flowing into Thai bank accounts -- conveniently earning billions of baht for those banks? Having kept an eye for the last two years on baht fluctuations at the end of each month, it sure seems to be the case.