Alcatel wins bid for Thai telecoms

Alcatel wins bid for Thai telecoms

BANGKOK (AFP): French telecoms giant Alcatel Thursday won the contract to construct a fiber-optic cable network for Thailand, a spokesman for the state telephone organization said.

The board of the Telephone Organization of Thailand (TOT) announced Alcatel had won the 178.5-million dollar project known as SDH (synchronous digital hierarchy) after the company cut its original price by 10 percent to 5.8 billion baht (US$136.5 million).

Rival Japanese Fujikura refused to lower its bidding price while German company Siemens agreed to lower its offer by only three percent.

"Overall the winning bid of 7.6 billion baht ($178.5 million) is much lower than the allocated budget of 10.4 billion baht set by the government," a TOT statement said.

Philippe Chettou, managing director of Alcatel's operations in Thailand, told AFP he was "proud that Alcatel was the first supplier of a fully integrated network to Thailand," adding that "the network will stand as a reference for us in Southeast Asia."

In September Alcatel won a 1.8-billion baht ($42-million) contract to supply transmission equipment for the construction of the system network.

Chettou rejected any allegations of collusion or of offering an artificially low price: "We don't dump prices, the risk is too important. As a worldwide company we have no reason to deflate prices."

The network will vastly upgrade Thailand's telephone and Internet infrastructure and will result in lower fees for phone customers.