On Wednesday Morning at Pattaya City Hall, Khun Itipon, the Mayor of Pattaya took part in two contract signing ceremonies.

The first involved a Memorandum of Understanding between City Hall and CAT Telecommunications Company who have chosen Pattaya as their first site to install high speed fiber optic cables to facilitate local businesses and Tourists who require faster internet speeds. The entire project will cost around 700 Million Baht and users could soon be enjoying download speeds of up to 150mb which will transform the way people conduct business over the internet here in Pattaya and will also appeal to domestic users who will have improved access to the web.

The second contract signing took place later in the morning and involved a Memorandum of Understanding between City Hall and the government-controlled electric authority who would like to use Pattaya as a test base for the conversion of refuse to electricity. The project will use 3-400 tons of waste per day and if the program is successful here in Pattaya, the electric authority will roll-out the program around Thailand.

www.pattayaone.net

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2010-01-20

Two things.

1. in the fat of the first deal, how much will the City be stumping up? Always a bit quiet on the (not even fine) detail. Can someone who knows anything about the fiber optic world explain this - it seems to me that Pattaya is just going to get faster internet speeds. 700 million Baht seems like a lot of money just to achieve that fr Pattayans, and I hope CAT will be stumping up for it if they propose to use us as trialists for their own corporate ends.

2. Note each document is a Memorandum of Understanding, generally not legally binding and usually, especially here, not really worth the paper they're written on but widely use to bring a sense of importance and seriousness to a press conference, where none would otherwise exist.

Given the lax financial, regulatory and supervisory regimes here, I hope they will be putting in place binding agreements to cover for cockups, "misunderstandings" and the like on both projects, rhatehr then relying on a one or two page MOU.

Juct clocked this on Pattaya Daily News, but I'm still not sure what's going on and who is paying what.

http://www.pattayadailynews.com/en/2010/01...aya-city-mayor/

The second contract signing took place later in the morning and involved a Memorandum of Understanding between City Hall and the government-controlled electric authority who would like to use Pattaya as a test base for the conversion of refuse to electricity. The project will use 3-400 tons of waste per day and if the program is successful here in Pattaya, the electric authority will roll-out the program around Thailand.

No problem on the supply side here. I hope it can be put to good use.