The government is expected to endorse a 2-billion-baht budget for a long-delayed submarine cable project by March.
Digital Economy and Society (DE) Minister Pichet Durongkaveroj said the budget will finance the development of the first submarine cable route linking Thailand with Japan, Singapore and India.
CAT Telecom has already agreed to form joint ventures with Chinese partners -- China Telecom Corporation and China Unicom -- to develop the project, he said.
"China Telecom and China Unicom suggested Thailand develop the submarine cable route because of the massive amount of users along the route," Mr Pichet said.
The joint venture project will soon be proposed to CAT Telecom's board for approval before sending it for cabinet approval in March, he said.
Mr Pichet said the ministry will later propose a second route for a submarine cable linking Thailand with Hong Kong and mainland China. No further details are available.
An international submarine cable project is part of the government's 20-billion-baht investment in infrastructure projects in fiscal 2018.
The largest project is big data system development and integration, whereby each ministry is required to set up its own system, with the DE Ministry investing in a big data centre and cloud services.
Digital is one of six core areas the government has set as its national development strategy this year, aiming to help raise the country's competitiveness and make it a developed nation in 20 years.
Other areas are farming, services, tourism, entrepreneurship and logistics.
Earlier, the government planned to proceed with the 5-billion-baht submarine cable project linking Thailand with Hong and mainland China, possibly with help from the infrastructure fund. But the government last March decided to scrap the establishment of a mutual fund for national digital infrastructure aimed at gathering state telecom assets, including telecom networks returned after concessions, telecom towers and submarine cable routes.
The previous plan also toyed with the transfer of telecom asset items from TOT and CAT Telecom to the national digital infrastructure mutual fund.
Under the existing infrastructure fund conditions, as outlined by the Securities and Exchange Commission, each fund shareholder cannot hold more than a 33% stake.
Transferring state telecom assets to an infrastructure fund listed on the SET would not be in compliance with constitutional law, which mandates that state agencies must hold at least 51% of the total fund through a juristic person that operates state assets, Mr Pichet said earlier.