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Thailand Telecommunications Report Q4 2010
Business Monitor International, Sep 2010, Pages: 102
Thailand Telecommunications Report provides industry professionals and strategists, corporate analysts, telecommunication associations, government departments and regulatory bodies with independent forecasts and competitive intelligence on Thailand's telecommunications industry.
There have been some minor changes to all of BMI’s forecasts for the Thai telecommunications market in this quarter’s update. These arise from the inclusion of more accurate subscriber data covering the fixed-line, mobile telephony, internet and broadband markets, courtesy of the national regulatory authority, the National Telecommunications Commission. In most cases, the new data merely provide a more accurate measurement of the activities of incumbents TOT and CAT, plus some of their concessionaire partners in the fixed-line and broadband spaces.
It looks increasingly likely that the long-awaited auction of 3G and broadband wireless access (BWA) licences will now take place in September and late-Q410, respectively, and that bids may well come from players not already active in the Thai mobile market and, in some case, from entities that currently have no activities at all in Thailand. We therefore think that the prices bid for these licences may well end up higher than we – and, indeed, the existing mobile operators – were expecting. In the meantime, it is becoming increasingly clear that the country’s sole 3G operator, the Thai Mobile unit of TOT, is close to filling its 500,000 line capacity less than nine months after launching. Added to reports of growing numbers of smartphone users at AIS, True Move and DTAC, it seems there is a groundswell of interest in 3G/mobile broadband services. But with mobile ARPU levels generally far from high and still falling, the question all parties must consider is how aggressively they should bid for the licences.
While the mobile sector continues to exhibit solid growth (albeit in the face of saturation), the broadband market is surging ahead. The NTC’s data show that subscriber numbers grew by 24% y-o-y to reach 2.5mn by June 2010. Operators such as True Online and Triple T Broadband continue to entice customers with promotional offers and True is even upgrading the speeds of its broadband connections for free, hoping that customers will make use of its value-added services and, maybe, also take its fixedline telephony, pay-TV and mobile telephony services, too. True and Triple T are essentially limited in terms of expansion by the historical terms of their fixed-line concessions, which restrict them to serving metropolitan Bangkok and provincial Thailand, respectively. And, with demand for traditional telephone lines also on the wane, they are unlikely to invest heavily in expansion for long, which again limits their potential reach.
These issues underpin the small decrease in Thailand’s score in our Business Environment Ratings this quarter. Falling ARPU, mobile market saturation, increased costs incurred by expansion into new markets: all of these weigh heavily on the potential returns on investment for operators in Thailand. The score might improve once the 3G auction is concluded but, for now, the outlook is less sunny than before.
Thailand’s Country Risk score has improved slightly, though, as the economic recovery continues apace and the country looks set to outperform its peers. However, the Country Risk score remains tempered by uncertainty in the political arena: a new push by Thailand’s disaffected populace for a change in regime could yet prompt a harsh response from the military – another weight on our Country Risk analysis.
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