Bangkok: True announced compensation after the signal went down yesterday. Meanwhile, the Consumer Council called on the NBTC to review the structure of the transportation market.
According to Thai News Agency, after True’s signal went down yesterday, mobile and True internet users experienced signal failure in many areas across the country. True announced an apology. Initial investigation found that the problem was caused by an electrical failure at the Core Network, which will require time to thoroughly investigate and fix. For customers affected by True’s compensation, they will receive 10 GB of free data and 100 minutes of free calls, valid for 24 hours. An SMS will be sent to customers with compensation details.
Mr. Chutha Sangkhachat, Subcommittee on Communication, Telecommunications and Information Technology, Consumer Council, stated that the True signal failure incident had a wide impact because True has more than 62.93 million users, accounting for approximately 57.79% of the total mobile phone market in Thailand. It is clear that the damage to more than half of the country’s people who use True’s services cannot be estimated. When searching for information on internet failures in the past, it was found that there were many incidents of this nature, such as True’s internet failure on May 30, 2024 for more than 5 hours, AIS Fibre’s home internet failure on April 27, 2025 for several hours, and AIS’s mobile signal failure in many areas on May 10, 2024.
Mr. Chutha said that the frequency of these incidents reflects that the problem is not limited to any one service provider, but rather a structural problem that needs to be seriously addressed, especially while Thailand has only two major telecommunications service providers left, which poses a risk to cybersecurity, consumer rights, and the country’s overall economy, especially after the merger in the telecommunications industry. It is clear from this incident that the country’s cybersecurity is shaky in a monopoly when one of the two service providers has a signal transmission problem. Meanwhile, there is news that the mobile operator AIS is offering to buy customers of NT or National Telecommunications Public Company Limited (NT), a government organization with a share of only 1.26% (approximately 1.4 million numbers) in the telecommunications market, which may cause NT to withdraw from the telecommunications market competition, causing the government to lose its share in the mobile signal and internet tha
t are held by only two private companies, which may have a negative impact on the country’s cybersecurity. At the same time, it can be seen that some consumers still see NT as a third option and want to continue using NT’s services. Therefore, it is believed that the government should support NT to remain in the telecommunications market and develop it into a third competitor in the market that can act as a balancing mechanism and provide an alternative for consumers.
The Subcommittee on Communications of the Consumer Council called on the NBTC, as the regulatory agency, to urgently investigate the facts about this incident transparently and issue automatic compensation measures for all affected consumers without having to file individual complaints, such as reducing monthly service fees, extending usage time, or adding special usage rights according to the unusable period. In addition, it proposed promoting the centralized government internet system to be used as a backup network in case of emergency, reducing reliance on the networks of a few private companies that may have problems at the same time.
In addition to the above issues, it is also proposed that the frequency auction to take place this June should set conditions on compensation and consumer protection as an obligation for the licensees, so that the ownership of the waves, which are a national resource, does not become just a right for private profit-making without any responsibility to the public.