Phisal thinks it is time for CAT staff to realise the risks they confront in a tougher competitive environment, and learn to handle them, whether as he said, "by facing them bravely, transferring them to someone else, or giving up the fight".

Phisal also showed last week that he was ready for the challenge by being the first to climb the indoor mountain at CAT headquarters. As he planted the flag at the top he said it symbolised CAT's determination to achieve its goals.

CAT's risk-management team set up the indoor mountain for all staff to try in order to promote the risk-management concept in the organisation.

Phisal said CAT had two goals this year - maintaining net profit at more than Bt4 billion, almost the same as last year, and attracting 60,000 customers by the year's end to its Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) 2000 1-x broadband cellular service in 51 pro-vinces, which will debut next month.

The CAT's board nominated Phisal to the top post last week and his offi-cial appointment is pending approval

of the Finance Ministry, which owns 100 per cent of the state agency. Phisal is currently CAT's acting president.

CAT will face its toughest challenge when its Internet gateway gold mine and overseas-call business are opened to competition by new licensees of the National Telecommunications Commission as a result of market liberalisation.

Phisal said the key to achieving the goals was self-confidence and positive thinking. "I told some employees to remind themselves every morning that they must be able to achieve this year's goal. Just like playing golf. If you see the water, just ignore it and aim at the target," he said.

CAT is also hoping to polish its brand image, he added.

CAT's senior executive vice president for corporate strategy, Kitisak Sriprasert, added that the state agency would develop promising mobile applications to do routine jobs for customers who demand greater convenience.

CAT will seek local and foreign business partners to foster the operation of its key businesses - overseas calls, data communications, and CDMA - Phisal added.

Overseas calls and concession fees each contribute 33 per cent to CAT's revenue, while the rest is from the fast-growing data communications service and the revenue-sharing gain from its joint venture Hutchison-CAT, which markets the CDMA service in 25 provinces.

The state agency is confident that it will get stronger if it merges with TOT Plc under the right model.

The government wants CAT to merge with TOT to strengthen both and cut their redundant investments. Their executives have agreed on a merger model under which the Finance Ministry sets up a holding firm to oversee both state agencies, which will still work separately, instead of combining them directly and thus prompting job cuts and protests from staff.

Both will then jointly create a network provider to invest in a cutting-edge network and lease it to the CAT and TOT subsidiaries and also other companies.

"Under this model, our subsidiaries will not have to worry about the network investment cost and the network provider will automatically be pressured to effectively manage the cost in order to lease the network at a competitive price. If not, our subsidiaries or its own customers will switch to other network providers and it will be the loser," said CAT chief financial officer Jirayut Rungsrithong.

The model can also cut redundant spending by CAT and TOT. Instead of each investing in separate but similar networks, both can share the facilities of a single network provider.

Their subsidiaries can continue competing with one another in the existing redundant arena and soon they will be keen to merge after failing to make a profit, Jirayut predicted.

Sirivish Toomgum

The Nation