True Online has launched phase two of the Bangkok Green Wi-Fi project with 20,000 Wi-Fi access points and has set a target of 600,000 users in six months.
The company has signed a three-year extension and expansion contract with the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration for 20,000 Wi-Fi access points.
Each user, identified by unique ID card or passport number, can sign up for unlimited 256 KBPS access or 5 hours of 2 MBPS access a month. Areas covered by the BMA initiative includes parks, roads, hospitals, ports and BMA offices.
The entire project, including publicity, is funded by True and the BMA does not have to contribute any budget to it. True is, in turn, using the publicity generated to up-sell to faster, paid-for packages.
A similar project by the ICT Ministry focuses on schools as well as rural areas. Together it is expected that a quarter of central Bangkok will be covered.
Meanwhile, TrueMove has announced a free pay-TV app for its iOS and Android customers. True’s H-TV app will be free to download until the end of June and 59 pay-TV channels will also be free until June 2013, after which it will revert to the standard price of $13 (399 Baht) a month. Existing TrueVisions customers can view their entire selection of up to 90 channels via the app.
While the app and 59 basic channels are free for the first year, using it consumes about 5 MB a minute of data, which TrueMove hopes will translate into increased ARPU as customers upgrade to larger bundled data plans. Currently, the typical TrueMove H user consumes between 1-2GB of data a month.