True in B33bn upgrade

True Online, the broadband arm of True Corp, has earmarked 33 billion baht for a two-year investment budget starting this year to modernise its home broadband network to next-generation fibre-optic cable covering 10 million households.

The move by the country’s largest home broadband service provider is a riposte to mobile leader Advanced Info Service, which earlier entered the race for fixed-line broadband internet with the commercial launch of its fibre-optic cable network.

“Our development [to strengthen our broadband infrastructure] is to accommodate the explosion of bandwidth demand driven by the increase in the number of internet users and data usage,” said Manut Manavutiveth, chief commercial officer of True Online.

“The investment budget will help us to expand our broadband network coverage to 10 million households out of 22 million in the country by 2016,” he added.

The new fibre-optic broadband service can deliver speeds of up to 10 gigabits a second.

Thailand’s fixed-line broadband market could reach 40% of the population before reaching maturity, according to the World Bank.

The number of fixed broadband internet subscribers i n Thailand totalled 6 million last year.

Mr Manut said True’s fibre-optic network would cover 6 million households by the year-end, rising to 10 million next year.

“We expect to have 300,000 new broadband subscribers this year, bringing the total to 2.4 million users,” he said.

To boost the number of fibre-optic broadband customers, True yesterday launched the True Super Speed Fibre package, delivering speeds of 30 Mbps for 799 baht a month, down from the previous fee of 1,299 baht.