CAT holds all concessionaire assets
CAT Telecom says its three cellular concessionaires - Digital Phone (DPC), Total Access Communication (DTAC) and True Move - have completed the transfer of their existing assets to the state agency.
The press conference announcement yesterday followed recent criticism from the Information and Communications Technology Ministry about the time CAT was taking to gather the assets of concessionaires, as required by the concession contracts.CAT president Phisal Jorphochaudom said the state agency was improving the efficiency of its staff in handling the asset-transfer process. He said CAT was considering changing the process to where assets were transferred at the same time networks were being built, rather than the present method of waiting until network-building was complete. The agency is studying the situation to determine whether such a change requires amendments to concession contracts. DPC transferred Bt10.12 billion worth of assets: Bt3.87 billion to the end of last year and the rest this year. DTAC transferred Bt68.58 billion worth of assets, including Bt56.044 billion to the end of last year. And True Move transferred Bt24.783 billion worth of assets, including Bt3.783 billion to the end of last year. CAT's concession to DPC was granted in March 1998 and ends in September 2013. DTAC's concession period began in September 1991 and will end in September 2018. True Move won its concession in September 2001 and it will end in September 2013. Meanwhile, Phisal said CAT would talk with TOT about plans to ask the Central Administrative Court to rule on whether the state agencies had to comply with TOT's access charge or the interconnection charge of the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC). Until recently, CAT's private cellular concessionaires paid the annual access charge to TOT as the cost of connecting to different networks via TOT's facilities. However, DTAC and True Move want to stop paying the access charge and have already begun paying only the interconnection charge, in order to comply with NTC regulations.
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