True Corporation Public Company Limited is a communications conglomerate in Thailand. True controls Thailand's largest cable TV provider, TrueVisions, Thailand's largest internet service providerTrue Internet and one of Thailand's largest mobile operators, TrueMove H, which is second only to AIS having surpassed Dtac in January 2017. As of August 2014, True, along with True Telecommunications Growth Infrastructure Fund, had a combined market capitalization of US$10 billion. TrueMove is also a partner of Vodafone Group. True is a subsidiary of Charoen Pokphand Group, which holds 50% of True's shares as of March 2017. It operates fixed-line, wireless, cable TV, IPTV and broadband services.
History
True Corporation was established on 13 November 1990 as TelecomAsia. The company had partnership with Verizon. The company was listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand on. In 2001, TelecomAsia set up mobile phone subsidiary TA Orange with Orange SA. Orange sold off its stake in 2003 but the Orange brand was used until 2006. In an effort to converge TelecomAsia's telecommunication business into a single brand, the company renamed itself to True Corporation in 2004, and streamlined its operations with subsidiaries Asia Infonet and Orange. In 2005, True took a higher stake in UBC, Thailand's largest cable television provider that time, and renamed the company to UBC-True. On 24 January 2007 UBC-True was renamed TrueVisions. On 8 May 2013, TrueMove H became Thailand's first mobile operator to provide 4G LTE commercial service on the 2100 MHz bandwidth. On 11 September 2014, it was announced that China Mobile agreed to purchase 18 percent of its shares for US$881 million. On 13 November 2014, Truemove H announced that it allocated 10 billion baht to expand its 4G LTE network in Thailand to cover 80 percent of the country's population. In June 2015 Suphachai Chearavanont, True's President and CEO, was presented with the "2015 Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific Telecom CEO of the Year" award in Singapore for his leadership and achievements in developing the telecommunications industry in the Asia Pacific region. In the same month, Chearavanont was elected president of The Telecommunications Association of Thailand.
Subsidiaries
True Corporation includes the following subsidiaries:
Thai activists have charged that True, Thailand's largest ISP, shared dissidents' internet account details to the junta in the aftermath of the 2014 Thai coup d'état. It is impossible to corroborate that True shared dissidents' data with law enforcement, but Thai governments since 2007 have sought to curb online criticism by passing legislation that compel ISPs to deploy online surveillance and censorship technologies. True's Privacy Policy, allows it to share data with law-enforcement authorities.
