Real Move Targets 1 Million Subscribers

[webfact]

Real move targets 1 million subscribers

By Usanee Mongkolporn, Sirivish Toomgum

The Nation

The new 3G service provider, Real Move, has targeted about 1 million subscribers this year, said Supachai Chearavanont, chief executive officer of parent company True Corp.

Real Move, which has provided the service under the TrueMove H brand, will spend Bt200 million this year on the marketing campaign, he added.

Real Move this year has mainly targeted all 200,000 existing 3G customers of TrueMove and 80 per cent of existing 800,000 subscribers of Hutchison-CAT Wireless Multimedia. It currently has about 50,000 subscribers after the commercial service launch last week.

Supachai said Real Move's service launch would enable True group to continue to maintain its leadership in the 3G service.

TrueMove, which is True's cellular flagship, has provided 3G service on non-commercial trial basis. Hutchison-CAT is Real Move's subsidiary. Real Move has leased 3G bandwidth capacity from CAT Telecom to provide the service.

Supachai said that the consumption of wireless data bandwidth in Thailand would jump in response to the upcoming 3G service competition.

Real Move and CAT will officially launch the service at the same time next month, while Advanced Info Service (AIS) is expected to kick off full 3G service this week. Total Access Communication (DTAC) last week announced it would be launching the commercial 3G service next month.

Supachai said True Group had to file complaints against DTAC about its foreign shareholding in retaliation for the complaints against CAT's management and CAT's board over the legitimacy of the deals between CAT and True to jointly develop the 3G service business.

Though DTAC's complaint is not directly aimed at the True group, the complaint had an impact on the group. This prompted the group to make the decision to "put the brakes" on DTAC.

"However, after our move, we're publicly being perceived as a giant company bullying DTAC when the truth is that Telenor, which is DTAC's foreign strategic partner, is many times bigger than us," Supachai said.

DTAC lodged a five-point complaint at the Central Administrative Court in April against the CAT-True 3G deals. The court in May accepted for judicial review only the first point, prompting DTAC to petition the court in June to accept the other four points, too.

In the first point of the complaint, DTAC requested a court order to terminate the resolutions of the CAT board on January 14 allowing CAT to enter into deals for collaboration on 3G service development.

Shortly after the DTAC complaint in April, TrueMove lodged a series of complaints against DTAC with several state authorities, alleging its rival of breaching the Foreign Business Act, which caps the foreign shareholding in a local firm at 49.99 per cent.

Two weeks ago, the Business Development Department, one of the state agencies with which TrueMove had lodged the complaint, passed on its preliminary probe results of the DTAC case to be further investigated by the police.

The department's probe of the case also sparked what appeared to be conflict between Deputy Commerce Ministry Alongkorn Ponlaboot and the department's director-general Banyong Limprayoonwong.

While the minister wanted the department to come up with a clear-cut conclusion whether DTAC had breached the law, Banyong wanted to simply hand the preliminary probe result to be further investigated by the police. Telecom industry observers questioned if the probe process was politically intervened.

Supachai said that True never expected in the least that the probe would spark a conflict between Alongkorn and Banyong.

-- The Nation 2011-07-25

[animatic]

Bowel Move.

[nikster]

"Real Move this year has mainly targeted all 200,000 existing 3G customers" ... I wonder how they're planning to do that if they are serious about moving to the exotic 800MHz band?!

True Move has tons of iPhone 3G subscribers - they're actually probably the vast majority of existing 3G subscribers. Doesn't run on run on 800Mhz 3G, and neither do the other phones True has offered in the past...

My guess is they will leave the "trial" 3G zones they have now well enough alone and everything will work as usual. But who is going to get a phone that works on 800MHz? Unless the iPhone 4S/5 or a new SG2 runs on that frequency....

N.

[lomatopo]

"Real Move this year has mainly targeted all 200,000 existing 3G customers" ... I wonder how they're planning to do that if they are serious about moving to the exotic 800MHz band?!

True Move has tons of iPhone 3G subscribers - they're actually probably the vast majority of existing 3G subscribers. Doesn't run on run on 800Mhz 3G, and neither do the other phones True has offered in the past...

My guess is they will leave the "trial" 3G zones they have now well enough alone and everything will work as usual. But who is going to get a phone that works on 800MHz? Unless the iPhone 4S/5 or a new SG2 runs on that frequency....

N.

No changes, same 850 Mhz you're used to. Well actually, 824 - 849 Mhz up, and 869 - 894 down. Often referred to as the 800 Mhz band, much to the confusion of some. Relax.

[Pib]

Just sales hype....businesses always advertise/promote expected (wish upon a star) sales growth.

[skippybangkok]

"Real Move this year has mainly targeted all 200,000 existing 3G customers" ... I wonder how they're planning to do that if they are serious about moving to the exotic 800MHz band?!

True Move has tons of iPhone 3G subscribers - they're actually probably the vast majority of existing 3G subscribers. Doesn't run on run on 800Mhz 3G, and neither do the other phones True has offered in the past...

My guess is they will leave the "trial" 3G zones they have now well enough alone and everything will work as usual. But who is going to get a phone that works on 800MHz? Unless the iPhone 4S/5 or a new SG2 runs on that frequency....

N.

No changes, same 850 Mhz you're used to. Well actually, 824 - 849 Mhz up, and 869 - 894 down. Often referred to as the 800 Mhz band, much to the confusion of some. Relax.

Lol....

He's a critic cause he has an internet connection............

At least someone has an inkling on the matter.........

[jfchandler]

Well, I talked at some length with an English speaking rep yesterday at True Move's Digital Gateway office about their Real Move or True Move H 3G service, and got a flyer with their current service plans and prices that I'll post here... The True Move H service is on the same 850 Mhz band that True Move has been using for its own trial 3G service, so no change there, as mentioned above...and no compatibility issues for their existing handset users...

However, what I heard from their rep didn't sound so good in this regard. I asked, what would happen if I, as an existing True Move subscriber, want to switch to the True Move H service. And his answer was, 1] I would need to fill out and complete an entirely new set of paperwork with copies of my passport, etc for an entirely new account because it's a separate company. 2] I'd also have to get a new SIM card with a new phone number (though I forgot to ask him about the possibility of doing a number portability transfer).

They have a web site for the new service, predictably located at: http://www.truemove-h.com/index.htm

And as has been often the case lately with True, the website is almost entirely built in Thai. Even though they have the little TH/EN icons on the page, choosing the EN icon right now doesn't lead to anything. And the pages are composed of images instead of text, making the usual online translation tools useless.

Right now, it sounds like their 3G service is available in BKK and several other of the larger city areas, with plans to eventually go nationwide. They're advertising speeds of up to 21 Mbps (local in Thailand of course), though the rep kind of laughed when I asked him what kind of "real" speeds would their service produce...

They also appear to be offering a 400 baht per month plan with 400 calling minutes, but no 3G or Wifi service. Not sure what the point of getting that kind of package would be on a 3G network. I asked the rep, and couldn't get any clear answer on that point.

On their web page and on their flyer, at the bottom, it does say... "A CAT reseller:.