The government has insisted the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) will remain an independent organisation to ensure transparency and accountability on the governing of national digital resources.
The amended NBTC draft bill, scheduled to take effect by year-end, stipulates the NBTC will not be dissolved. But its management and operational structures will be reformed, with the number of commissioners reduced to seven from 11.
The two existing committees, with five committee members in charge of the telecom sector and five focused on broadcasting, will be dissolved to develop a flexible decision-making process, said AVM Thanapant Raicharoen, a member of the National Legislative Assembly's (NLA) subcommittee working on amending the NBTC draft bill.
The amended NBTC draft bill passed its first reading in the NLA on June 30, with a unanimous vote by 162 NLA members.
The NLA is on the verge of holding the second and final reading of the draft, expected to come into force later this year.
The new structure of the NBTC will require commissioners to either have real knowledge of communications, or hold a military rank of at least lieutenant-general, or be a former board member of a public company that generated total revenue of at least 1 billion baht per year, or have worked in the consumer protection field for at least a decade.
AVM Thanapant said the high qualification requirements for NBTC commissioners would ensure they have real knowledge of the ICT industry.
For frequency allocation, the amended NBTC draft bill allows the regulatory body to allocate frequencies via other means than only auctions, as required in the existing NBTC Act. This includes an option to consider a bidder's qualifications or how its proposal would benefit the state in exchange for a frequency licence, the so-called "beauty contest" method.
He said the draft bill also gives the regulator the authority to recall all spectrum that is used inefficiently by state agencies or private spectrum holders under concessions so that it may be reallocated for optimum public benefit. This would pave the way for spectrum refarming where the government pays compensation to frequency holders that return spectrum to the NBTC before the expiry of concessions.
The NBTC currently does not have the authority to recall spectrum from licence holders before concessions end.
The draft bill calls for the regulator to pass 25% of any future frequency auction proceeds directly to a new digital economy development fund, with the remaining 75% of auction fees continuing to pass to state coffers, said AVM Thanapant.