Five regional mobile phone operators have shown interest in joining CAT Telecom to bid for a 3G mobile broadband licence from the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC).
CAT Telecom president Jirayuth Roongsrithong did not name the operators but said they had overseas experience and could compete with the two local mobile market leaders and their financially strong foreign shareholders.
True Corp, the third-ranked mobile operator, and some government officials have complained that the current 3G bid terms could favour top-ranked Advanced Info Service and DTAC, which have Temasek of Singapore and Telenor of Norway respectively as major foreign shareholders.
Mr Jirayuth said CAT has yet to shortlist operators but would start talking in detail with them to be ready if the 3G auction is held in December as the NTC plans.
The Asian operators believed 3G licences in Thailand would not be very expensive and the price would not deter them from bidding, he added.
He said CAT was determined to win one of the four licences on offer."If we lose the bid, it may become a crisis for CAT in the future," he said.
CAT and its state sibling, TOT Plc,rely on revenue-sharing payments from private operators under existing concessions. 3G services would not have the same concession structure.
CAT currently has only two 10 MHz bandwidth slots to provide its CDMA mobile service and would need more to offer 3G and other more advanced technologies in the future, in his view.
Mr Jirayuth said the state enterprise and its foreign partners should emerge as strong contenders since CAT has a CDMA network in 51 provinces and plans to buy out partner Hutchison to gain full control of the Hutch CDMA network in the 25 central provinces.
The two parties have signed a memorandum of understanding and a deal should be concluded by the end of this year, he said.
As well, CAT also owns the 800 MHz spectrum used by DTAC and 1800 MHz used by True Move.
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