Until recently, CAT had a monopoly on international telephony and CDMA mobile telephony. CAT partnered with TOT to provide the GSM mobile service Thai Mobile.[3] In partnership with Hutchison, it provided a CDMA2000 1x mobile service in 25 central provinces and operated its own CDMA2000 1xEV-DO in 51 provinces.[4]
Before 2003, CAT was an abbreviation for Communications Authority of Thailand, a Thai government agency. Despite not having been privatized, CAT was still made into a state-owned enterprise (though without the IPO to Stock Exchange of Thailand). It became a public company (with 100% of shares held by the Thai government) with its name CAT, where CAT is no longer an abbreviation for the Communications Authority of Thailand. Any telecommunication regulation was transferred to the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC).
The junta appointed General Saprang Kalayanamitr as the new chairman of the board of directors for both CAT and TOT. Saprang was accused by the founders of PTV, a new satellite television station, of being behind CAT's refusal to grant an internet link from Bangkok to a satellite up-link station in Hong Kong. PTV was established by some previous executives of the Thai Rak Thai party. CAT, however, claimed that it never received PTV's application for internet access.[9]
The junta also canceled the Thaksin government's telecom excise tax policy. The Thaksin government imposed an excise tax on private fixed and cellular services, and then allowed telecom companies to deduct the amount they paid in excise tax from concession fees to TOT and CAT. The total amount paid by the private telecom firms did not change. The Surayud government's excise tax cancellation meant that TOT and CAT would receive their full concession payments. However, TOT and CAT were then forced to increase their dividends to the Ministry of Finance to account for their increased income.[10]
On 30 November 2013, during the mass protests going on in Bangkok, a group of unidentified protesters infiltrated CAT's headquarter, which hosted its data center, to cut off its electricity. This affected roughly 92,000 clients of the company and resulted in about 300 million baht ($10 million) in lost transactions. Upon the system shut down, internet was inaccessible, phone lines were down, and ATMs were out of service.[11]
