HOME REVIEW

DTAC's call : your number's up!

No 2 yuppiephone network DTAC of Norway said mathematicians are wrong - there is not an infinite supply of numbers; it told the Magnificent Seven that if it doesn't get the promised three million new mobile phone numbers soon, it will cut off service to customers whose accounts seem inactive; Suranand Wongwitayakamjorn, secretary general of the National Telecommunications Commission, said it probably would start to trickle out numbers shortly, but don't forget: telephone numbers are a national asset to be allocated and used with grave respect in case... um, in case.

Thailand must become a nuclear power... oh, sorry, Thailand must have nuclear power, said Norkhun Sitthipong, the energy ministry's permanent secretary; he figures it will take seven years to bring the country around.

Highly qualified board chairman Saprang Kalayanamitr instructed your TOT to look into why his predecessor Sathit Limpongpan and ICT minister Surapong Suebwonglee were lackadaisical about challenging an arbitration board decision worth 9.175 billion baht plus interest in favour of True Corp; director Weerapol Panabutr will find something extremely fishy, or tell Gen Saprang personally why not; under the new, improved TOT, "binding arbitration" is to be defined as "fighting words".

Somprasong Boonyachai, the longtime chief of No 1 yuppiephone firm Advanced Info Service, moved upstairs to become full-time executive chairman and CEO of Shin Corp of Shingapore, replacing the retiring Boonklee Plangsiri; chief technology officer Vikrom Sriprataks of AIS is to move up to head the Shingapore phone company; Temasek Holdings apparently felt it would be a little too much, given current circumstances, to put full-blooded Shingaporeans in the positions.

The National Telecommunications Commission gave the Metropolitan Electricity Authority a Type 3 licence to peddle its 7,000km fibre-optic network on the market; MEA governor Pornthape Thunyapongchai said he might hook into the Provincial Electricity Authority (PEA) and the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (Egat) fibre nets to make a start on a national network.

Rawiwat Phanasantipab, managing director of Thai Energy Conservation Co, claimed the company had invented a new, electronic ballast that requires about 70 percent of the electricity as usual to keep a fluorescent light burning.

Nikon of Japan confirmed it has quietly increased the number of workers at its main Thai camera factory from 9,000 to 15,000 in a year; the Ayutthaya facility assembles about 270,000 low-end single-lens reflex (SLR) cameras a month - chiefly the D80, D40 and D40X models. Hitachi of Japan announced it will close its Mexican hard disk factory next year, hard cheese for the 4,500 Mexicans who work there; then Hitachi will move most of the Mexican duties to the Philippines; then it will set up a new factory in Thailand, which will be the base of its new 2.5-inch HDD production.

Experts told the Bangkok Post daily that Thailand banks are woefully behind the region and the world in key information technology systems. To get the new Happiness Indicator Index, you take the public health standard, add education reform, multiply the employment figures by.... no, better let the NESDB throw it at a computer and tell you the result.

Intel Corp finally announced details of its $100 laptop killers; the machines will be "fully functional but affordable," aimed at school children from kindergarten through year 12, and feature - this is not a joke - software called skoool; rugged, water-resistant machines will have mainstream operating systems, hard drives and wireless Internet capability; the first test machines will arrive in Thailand and 24 other countries within weeks, and Intel was so excited about this pants-wetting development that it clean forgot to mention the definition of "affordable".

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen was hauled up on the public opinion carpet again; he had to defend why a Thai company built and will operate the impressive museum housing Angkor Wat artifacts at the temple - still an international dispute in some old-fashioned minds; strangely, the company that built and will operate the museum for 30 years was not mentioned in the Phnom Penh debate; it is Vilailuck International Holding Co, which got the 100 million baht to finance the museum project from the success of Samart Corp and subsidiaries.

Multimedia producer DigiCurve of Las Vegas bought Global Satellite Broadcasting Corp of Thailand, long on the cusp of being involved in global broadcasting but never able to make the leap; DigiCurve got some Global signboard advertising techniques, while GSBC got gelt; the two companies were so excited they forgot to mention how much gelt.

No 2 yuppiephone firm DTAC of Norway said it will list on the Stock Exchange of Thailand within three months, and parent United Communication Industry (Ucom) will be delisted by Oct 1 at the latest; the firm hopes to raise six billion baht for network expansion and debt repayment.

Sure, consumers are getting deeper pockets, said Pakorn Pannachet, chief of value-added services for No 2 yuppiephone firm DTAC of Norway; but he said he will sell eight billion-with-a-b baht worth of songs, games and more this year, 40 per cent better than 2006.

A survey by the former security firm Symantec of America determined that 70 per cent of all email in Asia is spam; Filipinos are the worst victims on the continent, with 88 per cent of all email sent to the Philippines nothing but junk.

Bangkok Post

Last Updated : Sunday April 08, 2007