The two companies will jointly forward the roaming deal, which was agreed late last month, to the National Broadcasting and Telecommuni-cations Commission (NBTC) for acknowledgement.

The roaming fee is reportedly 35-40 satang per minute. A telecom analyst estimated that the agreement with DTAC would cost AIS around Bt2 billion if the roaming lasted for six months and Bt4 billion if for one year.

Second-generation mobile phones compatible with the 900-megahertz spectrum usually can function on 1,800MHz as well.

An AIS source said it had so far migrated 1.6 million of its 12 million 2G subscribers on the 900MHz network to the 3G and 4G systems of its subsidiary Advanced Wireless Network (AWN).

AIS earlier operated its cellular service on 900MHz. After its concession ended last September, the watchdog reclaimed the spectrum for auction. True Corp and Jasmine International each won a 900MHz licence at an NBTC auction last December. They have to pay the first instalment of the licence upfront fee by March 21.

Once either True or JAS pays the first instalment, the NBTC will grant the licence to it, which means AIS will have to switch off its 900MHz service. This has forced AIS to offer heavy promotional campaigns to woo its 2G subscribers to the AWN network. It budgeted around Bt8 billion to offer subsidised handsets to encourage customers to move to AWN.

This week, True launched a campaign to woo this customer group to its network.

In a related matter, AIS yesterday denied an allegation by True Corp that AIS was blocking calls by its 2G subscribers to True’s cellular-service call centre.

Wilai Keangpradoo, AIS senior vice president for public relations, said the company was using all communication channels to inform its 2G customers about the privileges they will gain from switching to AWN’s 3G or 4G service. Therefore, when the 2G customers call out, they will hear this information first before their calls are routed to the dialled numbers. They will hear such messages for only one day.

The customers can cancel this information message by dialling *247*1# free of charge, and this is also told to them.

True Move H Universal Communication Company yesterday asked the Consumer Protection Police Division to investigate what it claimed were nationwide complaints of mobile customers being blocked from contacting TrueMove H Care 1331 to access information on switching from AIS to TrueMove H while keeping their existing phone numbers.

TrueMove H also said the beneficiaries and parties responsible for such actions could be AIS and its subsidiaries. If so, it took the view that such a practice breached the Computer Crime Act and the Telecommunication Business Act.

True claimed that when customers used the AIS network to call TrueMove Care 1331, their calls were immediately terminated, or re-routed to AIS’ interactive voice response promoting its services, and then the call was terminated.

True recently asked the NBTC to investigate the complaints.

The furniture giant, founded in Sweden in 1943, has lost a trademark dispute in Indonesia after the country’s highest court agreed the IKEA name was owned by a local company.

Indonesian rattan-furniture company Ratania Khatulistiwa registered its IKEA trademark in December 2013. It’s an acronym of the Indonesian words Intan Khatulistiwa Esa Abadi, which refer to the rattan industry.

The Supreme Court’s ruling was made in May last year, but only surfaced publicly on Thursday with its publication online by the court.

The ruling said Sweden’s Ikea, which registered its trademark in Indonesia in 2010, had not actively used the trademark in three years for commercial purposes and it could be deleted under Indonesia’s trademark law.

Ikea’s only outlet in Indonesia opened near Jakarta in late 2014.

Supreme Court spokesman Suhadi, who goes by one name, said yestrday that the ruling was not unanimous. One member of the three-judge panel said in his dissent that the trademark law could not be applied to a company as big as Ikea and much larger than the plaintiff, Ratania.

Officials at Ratania, which is located in Indonesia’s second-largest city Surabaya, refused to comment. Ikea in Indonesia did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Indonesian company took its case to the Central Jakarta District Court in mid-2014, when the first Ikea store in Indonesia was under construction.

The court ruled in September 2014 that the trademark was owned by Ratania and ordered Ikea to stop using its own name, which is an acronym for its founder Ingvar Kamprad and the farm Elmtaryd and village Agunnaryd where he grew up. Ikea appealed to the Supreme Court last year.

Ikea stores around the world are run under a franchise system. Since the early 1980s, the Ikea Group has been owned by a foundation registered in the Netherlands.

In-depth interviews with 711 job seekers across mainland China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam found that 39 per cent of professionals spent an average of three to four years in a role.

The company’s survey of 496 employers in these markets revealed a similar trend, with most hiring managers responding that 37 per cent of skilled employees told the same story.

The top two reasons for professionals choosing to leave their post are limited growth at the company and being underpaid.

To retain those professionals, Gerrit Bouckaert, country manager of Robert Walters Thailand, suggested that chief executives should be aware of corporate brand-building in parallel with preparing talent and career-development programmes, and promoting open communication between employees and employers and forging a good work-life balance.

Bouckaert said a company should be able to learn to read the signals at an early stage that its employees are unsatisfied in their jobs – well before they decide to leave the organisation.

The key clue in this regard is that an employee seems to be disengaged, resulting in a decrease in the efficiency and quality of their work.

To prepare for this problem, the human-resources department and supervisors should create a communication channel with employees, in order to get to the root of their unhappiness, he said.

He also suggested that if a highly valued employee wanted to quit, the employer sometimes needed to deal with this by making a counter-offer.

According to the firm’s survey, increased pay and a more competitive package were cited as the top reasons by 35 per cent of employees who would accept a counter-offer, closely followed by improved career progression, at 30 per cent.

However, 54 per cent of those interviewed said they would decline to accept a counter-offer to keep them at their company.

Other studies had shown that while pay rises could entice some candidates for the short term, there were usually other underlying causes for their unhappiness, Bouckaert added.

Apart from offering attractive salary packages, the key to effective retention is to keep employees engaged with the development of meaningful key performance indicators and a clear career-progression path, as well as more flexibility that creates a good work/life balance for them, he stressed.

For job seekers, the HR expert suggested that apart from creating a persuasive resume to present their core skill sets, they should dig down and do research about the target organisation and prepare themselves for a competency-based interview, particularly in high-demand industries such as finance/accounting, banking and financial services, human resources, information technology, sales and marketing, and supply chain and procurement.

The demand for professionals in these fields is fuelled by continuing foreign direct investment, particularly from China and Japan, he said.

“Candidates with experience in a multinational company, good English skills and management expertise can expect salary increases of 15 to 25 per cent when switching jobs this year,” the country manager suggested.

The share price ended at Bt42.75. Yesterday, the price dropped by 0.60 per cent.

There are reports that SCB Asset Management would suspend investment in shares and bonds issued by companies in Charoen Pokphand Group, pending for clarity on governance practices. There is widespread expectation that Korsak Chairasmisak, its chief executive officer who is the epicentre of the fiasco, would tender his resignation.

CP All’s board of directors convened a meeting today, days before the scheduled meeting on February 23, and resolved that Korsak and two other executives would retain their titles.

“Taking the above into careful consideration, the board has agreed to issue a formal admonition to the executives in question. All three executives will continue with their current responsibilities, in line with the stipulations of the SEC,” it said in a statement.

At the meeting, CP All’s board of directors agreed to review and refine the company’s governance and compliance guidelines. The Corporate Governance Committee will be set up, having the following individuals as members;

1. Pol Gen Phatcharavat Wongsuwan

2. Padoong Techasarintr

3. Umroong Sanphasitvong

The company would also appoint an external consultant.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on December 2 that four individuals were fined for using inside information in buying shares of Siam Makro. They are Korsak, Piyawat Titasattavorakul and Pittaya Jearavisitkul who are also executives of CP All. Athueck Asvanund, vice chairman of True Corp, was also fined. The SEC’s Settlement Committee fined the four for Bt33.33 million.

On December 27, independent directors convened a meeting and resolved that Korsak, Pittaya and Piyawat have accepted the ruling and paid the fines.

“After carefully reviewing the facts and taking into consideration the SEC punishment and the prior behaviour and performance of the individuals and their exceptional skills and experience, which would be difficult to replace, while balancing these factors with the overall effects and benefits to the company, as well as ensuring that this situation can never happen again. We have decided that it is appropriate for the individuals to continue in the business.”

SEC Secretary General Rapee Sucharitakul mentioned earlier that the regulator would refine the qualifications of listed companies’ directors. Those who were punished for insider trading would be disqualified to serve listed companies, he said.

They tabled the idea at a meeting of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission’s panel assigned to solve problems in terrestrial digital-TV business.

NBTC secretary-general Takorn Tantasith said he would submit the matter for consideration at next week’s full meeting of the regulator.

However, a representative of the Council of State at the meeting opposed the idea, arguing that full payment of the fee was a major responsibility of each operator.

The NBTC is expected to revoke two digital-TV licences held by Thai TV Co next week after the company refused to pay the second instalment of its upfront licence fee, as well as the annual fee, by yesterday’s deadline. Sombat Leelapata, acting deputy secretary-general of the NBTC, said the Broadcasting Committee would discuss the issue at its meeting on Monday, and would send Thai TV a written notice about the licence revocation.

Another notice will be sent to Thai Public Broadcasting Service, which provides a networking service to the financially ailing broadcaster.

The NBTC will also seek the Bt1.63-billion guarantee issued by Bangkok Bank.

Thai TV will also have to shoulder the unpaid annual licence fees and a daily fine of Bt60,000.

“We are interested in operating cargo trains for the 740-kilometre Nong Khai-Laem Chabang route,” Surapong Laoha-Unya, chief executive officer of the listed company, said in an exclusive interview with the Nation Group recently.

BTSC – a mass-transit business within the BTS Group – sees this route as offering high income potential and worthy of investment under the company’s expansion programme.

The Nong Khai-Laem Chabang route, which is currently a single-track railway with a metre-wide gauge, is being improved and upgraded to a double-track railway.

Some parts of the route now feature the double track, but only for a short distance.

“The logistics and transportation sector, especially for goods and products, in our country will be disruptive – resulting in lower shipping costs – if the rail system has a bigger stake of the total length of the transport network than just 2 per cent currently,” the CEO said.

If the government had a policy to open up rail operations for transporting goods and products on this route to the private sector, bidding could commence by the end of this year, with operations commencing within the next three years, he added.

As for the company’s strong foothold in the mass-transit rail network in Bangkok and surrounding areas, BTSC currently operates about 36.3km of rail track, compared to 20km of MRT underground trains operated by Bangkok Expressway and Metro, and the 28.5km Airport Rail Link run by theState Railway of Thailand (SRT).

For the metro rail network, Surapong said his company was interested in several upcoming lines, some of which had nearly completed construction, while others were at the initial study and design stage.

These include the Green Line extensions, the Pink Line and Yellow Line monorail routes, and LRT (light-rail transit) lines.

The Green Line extensions stretch the Skyrain to the north, from Bang Sue to Kukot at a total length of 18.4km – and to the south, from Bearing to Samut Prakan, at a length of 12.8km.

The extension for the Bearing-Samut Prakan route is 70 per cent complete in terms of civil engineering construction, while the Bang Sue-Kukot route is just being kick-started.

The chief executive said BTSC was also interested in the 7km Green Line extension from Bang Wa station in the west of Bangkok to Taling Chan.

The project is undergoing a feasibility study and is also subject to an environmental impact assessment (EIA) report, which is expected to be completed in the next few months.

BTSC is also interested in the Yellow and Pink Line monorail projects, which have received the green light for full investment by the private sector and are set to open for bidding for operating licences in August or September, he said.

Other metro lines of potential interest are the LRT railway from Bang Na to Suvarnabhumi Airport, covering a distance of 15km; and the Grey Line, which will link Watcharapol to Rama III and Thong Lo, and Prakanong to Rama III.

“These two lines could be strategically connected with the current BTS Skytrain routes that we are operating,” Surapong said.

Meanwhile, the Airport Rail Link extension for the Phayathai-Bang Sue route is also of interest to the company, with BTSC waiting to hear a clear government policy statement as to whether it would be open for the private operator to operate, or would continue to be run by the SRT.

“If we include the Yellow Line and the Pink Line, there will be a total of incoming metro lines of about 100km in length … This is sizeable for the operating sector,” the CEO said, adding that BTSC was currently fine-tuning its investment plan for train carriages.

The company will possibly place an order for all 172 train carriages it needs at one time, depending on the government’s policy for operating the metro rail network.

As currently planned, BTSC requires seven trains of four carriages of each for the Green Line BTS Skytrain, 15 trains for the Green Line Bearing-Samut Prakan extension, and 21 trains for the |Green Line Bang Sue-Kukot extension.

BTS Skytrain now carries an average of 700,000 riders per day during weekdays, resulting in 7-per-cent revenue growth for the nine-month period ending December 2015, higher than its 5-per-cent target, year on year, he said.