• 
• 

Published on October 22, 2007

CAT Telecom's board has ordered the organisation's management to set up what they call a "war room" and urged it to face the present challenges in a bid to motivate the state agency.

Board chairman General Montree Sungkasap said late last week that at the same time the board would restructure its own working processes to support the management in accomplishing its goals, but he gave no more details.

The moves are to revitalise CAT and the board wants to leave behind an impressive performance record before it departs when the new government takes office, he added.

In the war room the four business units - overseas calls, cellular, electronic business and data services - will display their operating performance 24 hours a day on computer screens.

Meanwhile, CAT's president Phisal Jorphochaudom narrowly passed a performance evaluation by the board last week with a score of 71.6 per cent, versus a minimum passing score of 70 per cent.

Montree said that most board directors are unhappy with Phisal's performance, due to his indecisiveness. The board will evaluate him again in January when his score has to be at least 75 per cent in order to keep his job.

Montree said the board had also handed Phisal a long list of challenges he has to meet in the next few months. One is seeking collaboration between CAT and its business competitor TOT.

The bitter relationship between the two state agencies stem from their competition in the same fields - overseas calls and the cellular business.

"I've floated the idea of a possible partnership with TOT's acting president and Phisal must accomplish this task," Montree said.

The board has also encouraged Phisal to secure joint-service marketing deals between the two existing cellular networks - the Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) 2000 1-x network of CAT in 51 provinces and the CDMA 2000 1-x network of Hutchison-CAT in 25 provinces.

Hutchison-CAT is a joint venture of CAT and Hong Kong's telecom giant Hutchison Telecom.

The other pressing assignment for CAT is finishing the examination of the second phase of the CDMA network in 51 provinces within the next few months. This will enable CAT to calculate the amount it will penalise China's telecom-network vendor Huawei Technologies for the late delivery of this phase.

Huawei delivered the complete second phase to CAT by the January 26 deadline, but CAT takes the view that the Chinese company has yet to completely install the required the high-speed software.

Huawei once claimed that the problem stemmed from different interpretations of the details of the contract, which stated Huawei had to deliver the second phase by this past January 26, while the complementary high-speed software would be completely installed in the network next year. Meanwhile CAT interpreted the contract to mean the entire network had to be delivered in January of this year.

CAT will soft-launch the network next month before the grand official launch in January. It will soon install an additional 375 base stations for the network.

Meanwhile, Phisal said that though CAT had made a net profit of Bt6.4 billion as of August, compared to the original target of Bt5 billion, the state agency had no reason to throw a party. The higher profit came from higher concession fees, not from CAT's direct performance, he added. CAT's operating profit was only Bt80 million monthly.

CAT owns the mobile phone concessions of Total Access Communication, True Move and Digital Phone.

Usanee Mongkolporn

 The Nation