Junta’s rejection of broadcaster appeal defended

[webfact]

Junta’s rejection of broadcaster appeal defended

By The Nation

 

 

The National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) on Tuesday declined to invoke its special powers under Article 44 of the constitution to ease the financial burden born by terrestrial digital TV licence holders and two holders of 900MHz licences.

 

Takorn Tantasith, secretary-general of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC), revealed the decision following a meeting with the junta.

 

He said the NCPO was worried it would be accused of showing undue favour to the two private 900MHz licence holders if it granted relief measures as requested.

 

Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam told the NBTC to present further justification in writing for the junta to approve relief measures.

The licence holders had asked the government to ease their financial woes by granting a three-year grace period in paying the remaining instalments of their upfront licence fees and by halving their broadcasting network rental fees for two years.

 

Advanced Wireless Network (AWN) and TrueMove H Universal Communication, both of which hold NBTC 900MHz licences, had asked the junta to let them split their fourth and final instalment payments on the spectrum auction upfront fees into five tranches. They offered to pay Bt10 billion per year per tranche.

 

AWN and TrueMove H are each required to pay around Bt60 billion in 2019.

 

Thailand Development and Research Institute president Somkiat Tangkitvanit said recently neither the government nor the NBTC should be held responsible for losses incurred by the licence holders as a result of a glut of available channels and viewers shifting to alternative technical platforms.

 

He said both factors causing the losses were part of the normal business risk the broadcasters should have been aware of from Day 1.

 

The broadcasters have complained that the NBTC failed to ensure the industry’s smooth transition from analog to digital transmission.

 

Somkiat said that, unlike the case of digital TV operators, it was not clear what the government or NBTC did wrong to cause financial difficulties for AWN and True.

 

And, unlike to the broadcasting industry, the shift to alternation platforms did not severely impact the telecom industry, he said.

 

Somkiat said such disruption might diminish telecom operators’ revenues, but they earned more from wireless data services in compensation.

 

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/breakingnews/30341837

 

-- © Copyright The Nation 2018-03-27

[Chang_paarp]

14 minutes ago, webfact said:

Advanced Wireless Network (AWN) and TrueMove H Universal Communication, both of which hold NBTC 900MHz licences, had asked the junta to let them split their fourth and final instalment payments on the spectrum auction upfront fees into five tranches. They offered to pay Bt10 billion per year per tranche.

 

AWN and TrueMove H are each required to pay around Bt60 billion in 2019.

 

These companies bid huge sums of money to gain this section of the spectrum in an auction. If I remember correctly the auction was held twice to get the right result because of irregularities. They hoped to be able to hold their competitors to ransom for access to this [art of the spectrum. They are discovering that this business model is not working and are crying poor to the government. It seems there was no plan B if their competition did not come to them on bended knee with open cheque books in the offing.

 

As to the terrestrial TV stations I suspect a similar problem in bidding for spectrum along with discovering that serving up rubbish on TV drives people to discover there are other technologies available to get entertainment.

 

As an aside I am always puzzled when I see terrestrial TV advertising streaming services and cable TV when they would not advertise a competitor channel's shows. Then they wonder why their audience numbers drop and their advertising revenue follows.