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To: Maurice Winn who wrote (22087)	8/4/2002 7:45:17 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Re: they are charging extorquerationate prices per megabyte, Can you define that in dollar terms? TIA

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (22087)	8/5/2002 3:23:07 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 74559

Firms ready to sue CAT over CDMA Agency accused of breaching own terms for contract Komsan Tortermvasana bangkokpost.com A threat of legal action from disgruntled telecom firms has emerged as the Communications Authority of Thailand (CAT) moves toward screening financial proposals for its 15-billion-baht CDMA mobile-phone project. Bidders who passed screening of technical proposals are to be invited today to compete in negotiating financial aspects of the network extension. However, some telecom companies say the CAT has already violated its own bidding conditions by accepting for consideration four financial proposals that do not conform to the stated terms. In making their complaint public, the firms said that they studied the conditions and found them too tough, otherwise they would have lodged bids. The CAT, they said, was being unfair by looking at proposals that breached the bidding conditions. A telecom industry source said the CAT had stated that it would lease the CDMA network for 12 years and pay rent for 11 of those years after an initial one-year grace period. However, the financial proposals of all four bidders accepted for talks would oblige the CAT to pay rent over an eight-year period in order to make the operation viable from their standpoint. They claim that eight years is the international standard timeframe for network leasing. As well, the source said the bidders had not agreed to pay fines, as required by the CAT, if they failed to reach network subscriber targets. ``None of the bidders' financial proposals, which were made separately from the technical proposals, conform with the terms of reference,'' the source said. The sidelined companies, which the source declined to name, were prepared to take the CAT to court if it insisted on proceeding with financial negotiations based on proposals that breached the conditions. A source on the CDMA bidding committee said the financial proposals of the four bidders ranged from 10 billion to 20 billion baht with the Ericsson consortium quoting the highest price, followed by Lucent Technologies, Motorola with Nortel, and ZTE Corp with Jasmine. Earlier, an industry source said that ZTE Corp, a Chinese trade supplier which had teamed up with Jasmine International subsidiary Acumen, was unlikely to pass technical screening because it had relatively limited experience with CDMA (code division multiple access) technology. The three other groups are EPC Solution and Lucent Technologies; Siam MCT Telecom, M Link Asia and Ericsson; and Ucom's Real Time Co, which teamed up with Motorola, Nortel and Samsung as prospective suppliers. Industry experts say Ucom and M Link are the front-runners. Amnuaysak Thoonsiri, the senior vice-president of Ericsson Thailand, said Ericsson had proposed prices to partner Siam MCT Telecom, a Mitsubishi joint venture, to negotiate with M Link. The group's proposal was very competitive, he claimed, adding that those in the telecom industry agreed that several conditions in the terms of reference were impractical. That was why the proposal had included suggested amendments, Mr Amnuaysak said. The bidders which met technical requirement will be required to import their equipment for use in four-month trials. Providing equipment for the trials would cost each bidding group at least 80 million baht. Therefore, the competing groups had to be prepared to lose this amount if their total technical and financial package was not accepted by the Communications Authority of Thailand, as the agency would not meet the cost, Mr Amnuaysak said.