Thailand's broadcasting regulator, the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) officially adopted DVB-T2 a year ago. Since then, the Broadcast Commissioner, Col. Dr. Natee Sukonrat, and his team have been working on creating the necessary framework for the introduction of DTT.  As with many other countries, it was decided that the broadcasters will focus on providing content while network operators will be in charge of content distribution. To that end, the NBTC is going to award four network licenses. To speed up the roll-out and to assist low-income households, the government plans to set-up a coupon program to subsidize DTT receivers.

In addition to the regulatory framework, there are also many technical aspects to be considered for network planning and roll-out. These were addressed on 13 - 14 June in the "Go Digital Workshop: DVB-T2 Implementation" jointly organized by NBTC, ITU and DVB in Bangkok. In the DVB session several experts provided information on network implementation. The topics covered were wide ranging from video/audio processing and multiplexing in the head-end, to modulation and local content insertion. Also discussed, were set-top box issues, Service Information and network planning and rollout. In his session summary, Peter Siebert stressed the importance of basing decisions on the total cost of ownership, taking into account not only capital expenditure (CAPEX), but also operational expenditure (OPEX). There was great interest in the event with around sixty participants representing regulators, broadcasters, system integrators and potential network operators, listening  to the presentations and taking part in the discussions.