Thai telecom giants to merge

[reader]

Those of us who buy sim cards on arrival will soon have fewer--if practically none--choices in the future.

From Bangkok Post

Telecom firms Total Access Communication Plc (DTAC) and True Corporation Plc have agreed to merge, to pursue new tech business and raise venture capital for startups.

The merger plan was approved by their respective executive boards on Friday and their decisions forwarded to the Stock Exchange of Thailand on Monday.

The two companies on Monday also signed a memorandum of understanding for an equal partnership to form a new merged firm to pursue tech business.

The companies said that Citrine Global Company, a joint venture of Telenor Asia, the parent firm of DTAC, and Charoen Pokphand (CP) Holding, the parent firm of True, would make a conditional voluntary tender offer for all shares of the two firms - 5.09 baht per one share in True and 47.76 baht per one share in DTAC.

Norway's Telenor and CP issued a separate joint statement, that both True and DTAC will enter into equal partnership to form a new tech firm that will pursue new tech businesses, create a digital ecosystem and set up a fund to support startups.

https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/2219499/true-dtac-formally-announce-merger-plan

[PeterRS]

That still leaves AIS. I find True is already far too big with all its tentacles into much of Thai life. Certainly its virtual satellite TV monopoly has gone way downhill in recent years and remains one of the most expensive in Asia.

[Guest]

It seems the Thai competition authorities are content to allow CP to become dominant in any sector they like.   Takeovers which would stand no chance at all in Europe or North America get approved here, just as long as CP are involved.

[PeterRS]

20 hours ago, z909 said:

It seems the Thai competition authorities are content to allow CP to become dominant in any sector they like.   Takeovers which would stand no chance at all in Europe or North America get approved here, just as long as CP are involved.

In a country where almost everyone is corrupt at some level or another, this is hardly surprising. I can remember when Thailand had two satellite TV companies and there was a degree of choice (although not much then). When they merged after the Asian Economic Crisis to form UBC, the programme content was much more varied with a variety of news, sports and entertainment channels including CNN and HBO. UBC went into a joint venture with True in 2006 becoming TrueVisions a year later. To the channel list was added several which showed up to three English Premier League soccer matches on a Saturday evening.

After it lost the Premier League rights in 2013 for 3 years, it started to go downhill. Now you can see the Premier League again, but you pay extra on top of the already high subscription fee. A few years ago we lost all the HBO channels, despite True acknowledging that HBO1 had a high viewership - and to my mind by far the best shows. True claimed the viewership for the other HBO channels was low and HBO would not negotiate a deal just for HBO1. Instead of HBO, we now have incredibly boring channels with mostly ancient movies and endless repeats of more recent ones. It was not long ago that the same Bourne movie was being shown on two separate channels at the same time! 

To increase profits it has now dropped Fox Sports and a number of sports events which used to have English commentary. If we now get them the commentary is only in Thai. Other channels have been dropped in favour of more Korean fare (not entirely  unwelcome when there are so many cute guys in the series and game shows 😀). Even more oddly, Channel 240 is devoted to sometimes rather good series. But True never provides any information about which episodes are being aired at which times or which are repeats. Sometimes they are once a week; sometimes two nights a week; sometimes nightly. How on earth we are supposed to work this all out is ridiculous. And now there is a crime series on Channel 240 only in Dutch. No dubbing and no subtitles in Thai or English. As of 2010, there were only 25,000 Dutch people living in Thailand. How come they get their own programme on the country's only satellite broadcaster?

[TMax]

I had AIS on my last 2 trips and was very happy with it, previous trips I had something else (can't quite remember which) but I do remember getting sick of the garbage sms messages that were a constant annoyance. Will stay with AIS on my return, whenever that might be, have seen many complaints about True and its service on facebook that hasn't left a positive impression.