TOT labour union petitions house panel

The petition was submitted to Prapat Pothisuthon, chairman of the joint committee, which started vetting the bill yesterday.

Section 84 (3) and (4) in the provisional clause stipulate that TOT and CAT Telecom must repatriate all concessionrelated revenue to the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) - the regulator to be established under this law - after the NBTC law has been in effect for three years.

The NBTC will pass on their revenue to the state coffers.

The petition said that the revenue should be repatriated only after the privatisation of TOT and CAT.

The Telecommunications Association of Thailand yesterday also submitted its opinion on the bill to the joint committee. One opinion is that the panel should reduce the number of NBTC commissioners to 11, instead of 15 as proposed by the Senate.

Telecom industrialists have been concerned that if there are too many NBTC commissioners, they would take time to reach a consensus on crucial issues.

The NBTC will replace the existing sevenmember National Telecommunications Commission in overseeing the broadcasting and telecom sectors and granting new spectrum licences.

There are 23 points on which the Senate and the House disagreed in the present bill. Their joint committee has focused the vetting on the appropriate number of NBTC commissioners and the grace period for TOT and CAT to still keep their concession revenue before they have to start transferring the whole amount to the state coffers.

The existing bill sees the NBTC commissioner number increasing to 15, up from 11 in the previous version. Of the additional four, two are from the national security field.

According to the bill, two commissioners will have expertise in national security, three in the fields of education and culture, one in radio broadcasting and one in television broadcasting.

The others include two with telecom expertise, two with legal expertise, two with economics expertise and two from the field of consumer protection, with one related to radio and television broadcasting and the other to telecoms.