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NTC gives MEA fibre power

The Magnificent Seven handed over a Class 3 contract to the Metropolitan Electricity Authority to own and operate a commercial fibre-optic network; the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) also announced plans to similarly endow the Provincial Electricity Authority and the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, thus establishing a rudimentary but nationwide, commercial network of fibre; this upset the Official Censor of the 2006 Military Coup, Information and Communications Technology Minister Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom; he praised the Magnificent Seven, but said power utilities shouldn't be horning in on telecoms, and speaking of the NTC he said it was mistaken in replacing access charges with interconnection rates by telecommunications firms.

Chipmaking giant Intel Corp scoured Asia for a dependable country with educated and eager workers to place its new $2.5 billion 12-inch wafer chip plant; it picked China.

Red Match of Israel stormed the JobJob website venture of Post Publishing - Bangkok Post and Post Today - and left it a lot easier for employers and jobseekers to find each other; Red Match CEO Daniel Avidor is working on similar sites in Vietnam, Korea, the Philippines and Taiwan, and figures he'll see a million job positions online by New Year's Eve; Post Publishing deputy CEO Supakorn Vejjajiva said employers could advertise on both dead trees or hard drives and link their online presence in two languages to boot.

The Stock Exchange of Thailand said it expects that brokerage companies will open 30 full and cyber branches with banks to make it ever easier for investors to fork over the cash; more surprisingly, most will be up-country; SET president for vice Kengkla Ruckphaopunt said Phillip Securities already has a cyber branch in Chumphon, and United Securities has two in Yala and Sakhon Nakhon.

Executives of your CAT and partner Hutchison of Hong Kong met to finalise plans on marketing the nationwide CDMA yuppiephone network that is nearing completion; Hutch keeps its Bangkok-plus-25-province original network, while CAT will control operations in the other 51 provinces, where Huawei Technologies are creeping towards completing the hookups; CAT already has 15,000 customers, while Hutch has 700,000 subscribers, almost 1.8 percent of mobile phone owners in Thailand.

There will soon be more ways to call overseas than ever, as virtually every telecoms player hopes to get a tiny toe in the door of international direct dialling (IDD) - even though market growth is a sickly 10 per cent, max; your CAT Telecom and TOT are going to be stepping up overseas call operations, as are fixed-line peddlers True Corp and TT&T, as well as yuppiephone networks AIS of Shingapore and DTAC of Norway; how all these operators hope to compete with dirt-cheap (or free) VoIP calls has not yet been explained.

Advanced Info Service of Shingapore insisted on its gosh-given right to offer overseas telephone calls; your CAT Telecom union noisily disagreed; CAT union leader Wattana Eiambumroong said the "005" overseas calls offered by AIS were hurting CAT business, and the constitution guarantees that CAT never can be hurt by anything like competition.

Put 54 advocates from nine countries in a room and it's a pretty good start on a conference against kiddie porn on the Internet; most of the participants had titles like "advocate" and "NGO workers" but there was a scattering of police and a few judges in the Bangkok workshop; the money and very nice meals came courtesy of the British government and its Bangkok embassy; Microsoft's designated participant noted that the very excellent Microsoft Windows allowed 50,000 pervs to be online at any given moment.

Information and Communication Technology Minister Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom, chief of the Official Censor of the 2006 Military Coup, said he couldn't think of a reason to block hi-thaksin.net, the anti-government website financed by a very well-off benefactor who may have been a telecoms mogul; it's not dirty, said the minister, and doesn't violate lese-majeste laws; any Internet provider that blocks the site is acting entirely on its own, he explained menacingly.

State-owned Vietnam Airlines will offer only e-tickets on domestic flights effective right after Songkran, beating Thai Airways International.

In a huge, shock surprise because it came so late, the Orwellian Media Development Authority of Singapore said it was time to also control the Lion City's Internet and other new media; the MDA is the press regulator, responsible for the testicilotomy of newspapers and TV in the 1970s, a surgical procedure producing effects similar to lobotomy.

Bangkok Post

Last Updated : Wednesday April 11, 2007