“We will work with our business partner Playwork for the launch of the service on 2.6GHz soon and will submit the plan to the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission for consideration,” he said.

MCOT has signed a contract with Playwork to have the latter operate the planned pay-TV service for 15 years on a revenue-sharing basis.

Sivaporn said Playwork was talking with all mobile operators on possible cooperation on a 4G network for the service. One of them is reportedly Advanced Info Service. MCOT itself does not have a 4G network.

“This service will boost MCOT revenue,” he said.

MCOT will talk with Playwork on the amount of bandwidth on the 2.6GHz spectrum needed to operate the pay-TV service, and the rest will be handed over to the NBTC. MCOT might need only 35-50MHz to provide the service.

Yesterday the NBTC held talks with Deputy Prime Minister Prajin Juntong and MCOT on the plan to reallocate part of MCOT’s 2.6GHz for auction, which is expected to take place early next year.

Prajin said MCOT held 144MHz of the 2.6GHz spectrum and wanted to hand over part of it for auction to provide 4G service. However, the NBTC will have to pay compensation to MCOT.

He added that the MCOT plan to hand over the spectrum needed to wait for the new NBTC law, which will allow state agencies to hand over their spectra for auction in return for compensation. The government is drafting the legislation and is expected to take around six months to complete the process.

“Currently Thailand has only 250MHz of bandwidth assigned for telecommunication purposes, while technically the total should be 690MHz,” Prajin said.

NBTC secretary-general Takorn Tantasith said the commission and MCOT would coordinate on the plan to hand part of the 2.6GHz spectrum over.

There is a total of 168MHz of bandwidth on the 2.6GHz spectrum, of which MCOT holds 144MHz and the Public Relations Department holds the rest.