Interesting article, Don Sambandaraksa is a thorn in the side of many hoping to pillage the local telecomms markets.

...gotta love the line, "Obviously the Thai way of doing things translates well to the North Korean way of doing things.", highlighting the North Korean link. And Thais bust on DTAC for the Telenor connection.

http://www.telecomasia.net/blog/content/loxley-and-thai-way-doing-things?Don%20Sambandaraksa

Loxley and the Thai way of doing things

March 19, 2012

People often dismiss the Thai way of doing business as typical Asian family business norms with a healthy dose of nepotism, but even for someone used to a handful of elite companies winning every government contract, the scale and the amount of dirt swept under the carpet can be surprising.

Take, for the example, the conglomerate Loxley. The company does everything from household foods such as oil and nuts to communication networks.

Loxley recently won two large contracts in the telecommunications sector in Thailand. First was a three billion baht ($97 million) submarine fibre cable for state-owned CAT Telecom. The 1,340 km cable is to link Thailand and Sri Lanka and was won by a consortium of Loxley and Italian Thai, another one of those companies who thrive solely on government contracts.

The other was a 1.5 billion baht ($48 million) for NedNET - the National Education Network for the Ministry of Education. Never mind the fact that Thailand is already swamped in unused fibre, of course the MoE needs another network of its own to connect 7,606 schools.

TIT