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Thai e-commerce setting a pace — Bangkok Post
March 15, 2000

BANGKOK (Bangkok Post) - There is an online boom in the region, said the Boston Consulting Group, but it summed up e-commerce in the title of its report: "At a snail's pace;" the group said Thailand was among a handful of otherwise rational nations which simply aren't joining the world; the problems in Thailand are a lackadaisical government, an offline population and an unadventurous business community searching for clues about what is going on with all this Internet stuff they keep hearing about; to summarise, said BCG, "Not all markets in Asia are ready to embrace e-commerce; Thailand... still lag(s) behind."

Goanpot Asvinvichit, the deputy commerce minister, promised the cabinet will approve two of the seven e-commerce laws Real Soon Now, but made no promises about getting it through parliament and no one is waiting for the government to act.

Dreamer Media of Taiwan signed a contract to set up a retail web site with the Central Group, especially featuring Central's Watson's drugstores and Robinson malls. Tops supermarkets have a web page; you can't order (yet) but you can whine or make constructive suggestions.

Thai Portal announced it will launch thailand.com in June, and try to make it the country's number one English language web portal with a combination of news and consumer e-commerce; owners Nation Multimedia Group claimed they have invested 300 million baht in the site, including a 93-million-baht maintenance contract with IBM (Thailand). Reuters announced it planned to become the major news source for the Internet in Thailand, in both Thai and English; Reuters is spending $800 million to put its entire operation on the Net, everywhere in the world.

February 29 passed into history without a hitch and the Y2K centre began closing down; the centre spent 1.3 billion baht.

Thai telecoms are doing much better, thanks, and coming out of the recession all right; Shin Corp is tops with with a profit of 9.38 billion baht for 1999 - led by its thriving AIS mobile network; TelecomAsia technically lost money last year - but mainly to launch the PCT service; similarly, Jasmine International reported a loss on paper, but only to write off debts.

Creditors accepted a plan to restructure the 38-billion-baht debt of upcountry phone provider Thai Telephone and Telecommunications.

Shin (once known as Shinawatra) Corp and the Chicken People bought flowers and chocolates and asked if they could take the lovely Thai Telephone and Telecommunications out to dinner and maybe dancing; one of the two are likely to ask to marry TT&T and try to become the telecoms firm in Thailand which is prepared for privatisation and foreign competition; Adisai Bodharamik, former CEO of TT&T, said the firm will sell 22% of itself to a suitable suitor who a) has money and b) agrees to stay out of the boardroom - which could prove to be two mutually exclusive requirements.

Suddenly there were three mobile phone companies again - at least on paper; the Chicken People announced they will take over the moribund Wireless Communication Service; CP will set up 700 cell stations and have an actually working network soon, something WCS couldn't achieve, and they forecast 50,000 users on the 1800-MHz network by New Year's.

Advanced Info Service, the Shin Corp subsidiary, announced it will sell eight billion baht worth of 1,000 baht debentures to raise money to build a bigger, better GSM network; president Somprasong Boonyachai said the Shin Corp subsidiary will also spend heavily on adverts to improve its image - but he did not explain.

Seagate Technology of America and Minebea of Japan announced a project to develop new bearing motor technology in Thailand; Minebea is to build a two-building plant in Thailand at a cost of $137.4 million, with the first building scheduled to open in December.

Investors suddenly fell in love with the nine factories of Fujikura Ltd. of Japan, and sent shares of the optic cable and electronic parts maker soaring; the sudden surge came from a report by Makoto Kurosawa, an analyst at Commerz Securities , which put a "buy" on Fujikura because of its production strategy at the nine affiliates in Thailand.

The cabinet approved the new fee structure for fixed line telephone subscribers, which keeps the current rate of 3 baht per call, but also allows subscribers to sign up for metered calls at 1 baht per minute if they seldom use the phone for outgoing calls.

The forward-looking Communications Authority announced that Hutchison Whampoa of Hong Kong might be able to rescue its toy yuppie-phone network; the CDMA system has attracted a total of dozens of users, compared with the 60,000 it was targetting; CAT said it needs only 10 billion baht to build enough cells abd stations to make the system useable.

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