Thailand's DTT broadcasters may be required to provide free set-top boxes

A working group of Thailand’s National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) has proposed that companies that win one of the 24 licences for commercial digital terrestrial television broadcasting coming up for auction in March next year may be required to offer set-top boxes free of charge to customers.

The objective would be to accelerate the roll-out of digital TV services, with potentially 20 million DVB-T2 set-top boxes being distributed over two years.

Broadcasters would be able to take the cost into account when bidding for licences in the auction.