Commissioner says NBTC should hold off on decisions
The existing board of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) should neither approve any project nor endorse policy going forward, says a commissioner, as the final 14 candidates for the new NBTC board were announced last week.
If a critical agenda item requires urgent consideration, the existing board should ask the 14 candidates to join the meeting for their opinion, said Prawit Leesathapornwongsa, a commissioner of the existing NBTC board.
The recruitment of the new NBTC board is close to being finalised. Fourteen candidates have been recruited and are expected to be voted on by the National Legislative Assembly (NLA) in April.
Seven will be selected to make up the new board.
The eight existing commissioners, including the secretary-general, are only an acting board working until the new NBTC board is recruited. The existing NBTC board ended its six-year working term in October last year.
The new NBTC Act needs only seven commissioners who will be responsible for governing both telecom and broadcasting businesses, overseeing spectrum auctions and managing satellite spectrum.
The NLA committee working on recruitment for the new NBTC board opened applications for interested people in January.
Of the 86 candidates, many were high-profile individuals, including former permanent secretaries of ministries, former chief executives of telecom firms and state agencies, well-known judges, and highranking military officers.
During the selection process, each candidate was required to choose one of seven fields to apply for out of radio broadcasting, television, telecom, engineering, law, economics and consumer protection.
Only two names have been selected for each field in the final candidate stage to be voted on by the NLA.
Many high-profile candidates failed to make the latest cut.
The final 14 candidates include Korkij Danchaivichit, deputy secretary-general of the NBTC for the field of law, and AVM Thanapant Raicharoen, a deputy secretary-general for the engineering field.
In the final stage, NLA members will each vote for only one person for each field. Mr Prawit said the NLA will hold a meeting to vote on the new NBTC board in April, but the specific date is unknown.
The existing NBTC board earlier postponed the planned auction of the 1800- and 850-megahertz spectra for another 60 days to have its authority to conduct the auction confirmed by the Council of State.
The move is intended to ensure that the auction is legitimate and prevent legal ramifications for the involved parties.
NBTC secretary-general Takorn Tantasith said his working term at the NBTC office is until 2020 because the NBTC board extended his term last year.